Just not into this right now - maybe another time... ( )

Good story-teller and plot, with a lot of showing instead of telling throughout the book. ( )

Good story-teller and plot, with a lot of showing instead of telling throughout the book. ( )

Highly enjoyable. Nice characterization. Kind of a dry sense of humor throughout. This is what the first Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child should've been. It's about a wrongly accused man trying to clear his name and solve the murder, a la Reacher, but instead of being a laconic ex-military type loner with mad fighting skills, Virgil Cain is a laconic ex-baseball player turned farmer salt of the earth type with some flawed but good relationships who is quite realistic. When he's arrested for the murder of a slimy high-powered lawyer who has received a golf club through the heart (whom Cain had threatened previously), Cain starts to realize the incompetent cop in charge of his case isn't looking any further for the real murderer. Much like with Jack Reacher, a woman cop also features, but unlike with Reacher, the cop is intelligent, with professional skills, and the romantic elements between the two actually make sense. There's a rogue's gallery (as one reviewer put it) of potential murderers, the body count progresses but no gratuitously violent scenes (i just lost the Reacher fans), and the twists and turns kept me guessing. Great straightforward enjoyable suspenseful mystery. ( )

Brad Smith was a new Canadian author to me. I picked up his book "Red Means Run" based on a blurb which described it as "country-noir." It was a fun read, but more along the lines of a Robert Crais smart-aleck type of mystery instead of the dark-tinged noir genre. I've grown to associate the term country-noir with the Ozark-based novels and short stories of Daniel Woodrell and I think he was the one who first coined the term. Woodrell's works are a lot darker and more closely fit the idea of noir in general. Brad Smith's "Red Means Run" is more along the lines of a comic caper type of novel although it is still a murder mystery. His lead character is a Canadian named Virgil Cain who through a chain of events is farming in upper-New York State in the vicinity of Kingston, nearby the famed Woodstock / West Saugerties (home of the Big Pink house) sites associated with Bob Dylan and the Band. Cain is framed for a murder and ends up working with sassy country police detective Claire Marchand to solve the crime. The sharp and witty dialogue between the two leads was one of the pleasures of the book and gives it the sort of flavour of Elmore Leonard's "Out of Sight." I'll definitely look out for past and future Brad Smith novels as a series seems to be promised from the "Red Means Run" sub-title "a Virgil Cain novel."
Trivia note: The title of the book is taken from the Neil Young "Powderfinger" song lyric: "Daddy's rifle in my hand felt reassurin', He told me, red means run, son, numbers add up to nothin'." ( )