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Charles Williams
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Man on the Run Kindle Edition

by Charles Williams (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
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Pursued by the police, a desperate man fights to stay free—and stay alive
It’s raining hard when the man leaps off the train. He lands safely and creeps into town, praying he will find someplace to hide. It’s nearly daylight, and the police are not far behind. He breaks into an unoccupied seaside cottage, and is overjoyed to find coffee, whiskey, and cigarettes. But before the fugitive can relax, the doorknob rattles. The police are at the door. Russell Foley, third mate on an oil tanker, is not a cop killer. But the night before he got into a fight with a police detective, and a few hours later the cop was found stabbed to death. Unable to explain himself, he bolts, hoping to evade the police and somehow find the real killer. But for a man who cannot stop running, justice can be a hard thing to find.
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  1. Print length
    177 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
  5. Publication date
    January 15, 2013
  6. File size
    3301 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Williams] is just about as good as they come.” —The New York Times “One of the neglected hardboiled geniuses . . . his novels were perfect little gems.” —Joe R. Lansdale, author of Savage Season “Relying on wit, humor and ingenious plotting, Williams's characters constantly attempt to outwit the system.” —Woody Haut, author of Pulp Culture

About the Author

Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime. Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975.      

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ARQXY5U
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (January 15, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 15, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3301 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 177 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 28 ratings

About the author

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Charles Williams

Charles Williams

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Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime.

Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
28 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars not as good as his other books
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2014
Verified Purchase
This was a good light read, but not as good as his other novels. Good enough for an evening's read.
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Kelly M. Hudson
5.0 out of 5 stars nice noir
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2022
Verified Purchase
Slick, fast, fun…can’t ask for more. Excellent writer, great pacing, and tortured suspense. If you like old crime novels, you can’t go wrong.
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Keith T Gibson
3.0 out of 5 stars Man on the Run
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015
Russell Foley jumps off a train, in the pouring rain, desperately seeking shelter; he makes his way to a group of cabins near a lake, and holes up in an apparently un-occupied one. Soon, the owner of the cabin shows up, and he ends up saving her life when she hits her head. When she comes to, she recognizes him as the "armed-and-dangerous' cop-killer that the police have warned everyone against.

Instead of calling the cops as soon as possible, though, she listens to his story and becomes interested, and believes him when he says that he didn't kill anyone. She begins to help him, and together they begin to try to figure out who killed the cop, and why.

The rest of the story follows the two heroes as they track down, one by one, every person who they suspect might be involved in the killing. As they work through the suspects, they begin to discover corruption in high places, and Foley gets closer and closer to getting caught.

There are a little too many escapes (four) where the hero is almost certainly caught, but gets away, which is scraping the bounds of credibility. Still, this is mostly a good read, though unfortunately without most of the wit and sharp observations that Williams had in his best novels.
2 people found this helpful
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Dave Wilde
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Hard-To-Down Pulp Thriller From Williams
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2015
Man on the Run was originally published in 1958. It involves an often-used pulp motif of a man on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit. In typical pulp fashion, as he tries to figure out what happened and who was responsible, the evidence against him increases and the quagmire he finds himself in gets deeper and deeper.

While it is plot-wise not that remarkable, Williams was a master craftsman at storytelling and gives us a quality story that is easy to read, intense, hard-to-put-down, and just plain good reading. You can feel the intensity and the fear as Foley evades the police time and time again and he gets deeper and deeper in over his head, all alone, freezing, with nowhere to turn. And, even when he finds a friend, he has to wonder what the friend’s real motives are. Really enjoyed this one. Williams is just a terrific writer.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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gerard vatin
5.0 out of 5 stars c'est bien l'ancêtre de Donald Westlake
Reviewed in France on November 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
Pas un mot en trop, pas une pause, un concentré d'action par des personnages bien campés, tout est bon, quoi.
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