Book ~ "Running from the Dead" (2020) Mike Knowles

From Goodreads ~ Private detective Sam Jones's six-year search for an eight- year-old boy ends with gunshots in a basement and cold bodies that would eventually lead the police straight to him. Jones had never promised Ruth Verne that he would find her son alive but he knew deep down that she believed he would - worse, he had believed it too. Jones wasn't ready to look Ruth in the eye and tell her he had failed. He wasn't ready to admit that he lost everything and had nothing to show for it.

But an unsigned note scrawled on a bathroom door gives Jones a second chance - a chance for redemption. Thirteen words left by a young girl in trouble give him someone to chase and a reason to keep moving before the cops move on him. Jones follows the trail from an idyllic small town to the darkest corners of the city, running from the boy he failed toward the girl he could still save. 

Sam Jones is a private detective in Toronto, Ontario.  For the last six years, he has been hired to find Adam, an eight-year-old who disappeared years earlier ... and he has met Adam's mother every month giving her reports.  When Jones does find Adam, it's not the way he had hoped and he takes justice into his own hands.  He figures he has about a week before the police connect him.

In the meantime, he finds a couple cryptic messages in a bathroom in a coffee shop and feels that it's from a girl in trouble.  He couldn't save Adam so he's determine to find and save this girl ... and he knows he has less than a week to do it.  Plus he's been hired to find Willy, the 80-year-old father of a woman who is used to getting her way.  Jones thinks the old guy has just taken off for a couple days but the woman is concerned something has happened to him.

I've read a few of this author's books and have liked them.  I liked the writing style ... it's written in first person perspective from Jones' point of view.  As a head's up, there is swearing and violence.

I liked Jones ... he is on a mission and knows time is running out.  He is straight to the point and no nonsense.  Willy and Sheena, the barista at the coffee shop, were amusing and added humor to the story.