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

"Pardon me, sir?" Hennessy says, and if he were human, I'd say he was faking innocence.


"Nathan wasn't stupid," I say. "He managed to pull the wool over Rutherford's eyes and hide all his dirty business deals. He probably had no idea what he was walking into when he went down to the factory on 105th that night, but he certainly wasn't dumb enough to go anywhere in a neighborhood like East Amber alone. Still, he couldn't risk anyone finding out about his secret dealings. He needed backup. Backup that wouldn't talk." I shrug. "If it were me, I'd bring the butler-bot."


I'm leaning on my cane with the elbow of my bad arm. It hurts, but it gives me the freedom to use my free hand, under my jacket, to slip the .44 from its holster and caress the trigger guard with my fingertip. Hennessy hasn't so much as moved a synthetic muscle since I began speaking.


Chapter 41: Epilogue: Tacitus Nash