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

I stand there, holding Bot-Nathan's head by a fistful of hair, feeling oddly like a child with a broken toy. I watch the body for signs of life, but it doesn't move.


For a few seconds, some handicapped processing power remains active in the head. Brown eyes-manufactured to look so much like Rutherford's and Yvonne's-glare at me. The half-mouth tries to speak to me.


I drop the head. It whines on the ground with angry, meaningless syllables. Then even this fades away. Still, only after some experimental kicks am I satisfied that Bot-Nathan is really dead for good.


Chapter 37: Long Way Down (Part 1)