Author:
Corey McCullough is an independent copy editor, proofreader, ghostwriter, and author. He lives in western Pennsylvania with his amazing wife Vanessa and their two beautiful daughters. His favorite pastimes are reading, writing, playing video games, spending time with his best friend (Vanessa), and, most of all, being a dad.

Night lasts for days on the planet Jannix, and when the sun goes down over a city brimming with corruption and organized crime, no one can be certain they will see another dawn. Retired police detective Jack Tarelli has turned to the bottle to cope with these long nights ever since the unsolved murder of his wife, but when he's called to the home of an enigmatic starship tycoon just hours after a high-profile homicide, he knows his longest night yet has just begun.

Led on a chase deep into the shadows of a city that never wakes, the hard-nosed and uncompromising Jack finds himself on the trail of a killer whose true motives shrouded. Was it revenge for an interplanetary business deal gone wrong? Or something more personal?

As connections to Jack's own bloody past rise to the surface, it becomes clear that this is more than a search for answers. It's a race against time. And the body count is going to rise long before the sun.

A Knife in the Dark is a gritty tech noir story combining elements of "used future" science fiction and film noir in a fast-paced, futuristic thriller.

A Knife in the Dark

Yvonne's lips part slightly as she puts it all together. Ironic, in hindsight, what Rutherford told me about his offspring: his good, hardworking boy following in his footsteps, and his untrustworthy brat of a daughter. All this time, he's had it backward.


"The rumors heard were true," I say. "Well, I heard it as a rumor, anyway. From my intel guy. I see now that with all this hardware, you must be your own intel guy. Nathan really was seen walking around, but not in the way either of us suspected. It was a double. A doppelganger bot made to look, speak, and behave exactly like Nathan Harland."


She looks at the floor. "So, does that mean Nathan really is...?"


Chapter 32: Cheers