Wilson
Created by Mike Knowles

At one point in Darwin's Nightmare (2008), Mike Knowles’ hard-charging debut, career criminal WILSON confesses he isn’t “one of the good guys.”

Well, duh. Before this blitzkrieg of a crime novel has run its course, young Wilson will have inflicted a world of hurt on his enemies -- and taken more than a few licks himself. Wilson is a rumor: a professional go-between and thug for hire posing as a sort of quasi-P.I., but working on the sly for a very select roster of clients in the criminal netherworld of Hamilton, the hard, gritty steel town without pity that lurks on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario.

But when a fairly routine gig -- a “snatch-and-grab” at the local airport -- goes bad, Wilson’s name is suddenly on everyone’s lips, and he’s in everyone’s sights. The action is hard and raw and savage, and the characters are about as deliciously nasty as you’d expect. But what sets this book apart is Knowles’ considerable storytelling muscle, as he deliberately strings out the narrative (and cranks up the tension) with well-placed flashbacks to his protagonist’s dysfunctional past. And yet this is as clean and clenched a first novel as I’ve seen recently, suffering few of the common debut-work excesses. Devotees of Andrew Vachss’ Burke and Richard Stark’s Parker (and other singularly named tough guys) will immediately recognize the cold-blooded pragmatism and brass-knuckled approach to problem solving. The action is straight, hard and fast and the characters are as sharply etched as this stuff gets, as clean and tight a debut as I've seen recently. Fans of hard-boiled fiction in general should take heed: there’s a new bad boy in town.

Wilson himself may not be one of the good guys, but his creator, a Canadian schoolteacher, is definitely worth keeping an eye on. And he's recently backed up his credentials with a solid follow-up, 2009's Grinder, which has Wilson trying to escape his past in bucolic P.E.I., only to find there's no escape.

UNDER OATH

• "The evolution of the gangster novel takes a step forward with Darwin's Nightmare. Mike Knowles' hardboiled spin on Hamilton's underworld is written with a tireless and controlled intensity."
  Allan Guthrie
  
  
• "Relentless. Only the most ruthless survive. A fantastic new hard-boiled voice. Anti-hero Wilson is pitch-perfect."
  John McFetridge, author of Dirty Sweet

UNDER OATH

• Darwin's Nightmare (2008) ..Buy this book ..Kindle it!
• Grinder (2009) ..Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.