An acclaimed, award-winning thriller, published and translated around the world. Paul Wood is a modern vagabond, a man who chooses to leave the comforts of San Francisco to spend months backpacking through some of the world's most challenging terrain. While hiking in the Himalayas, Paul gets more of a rush than he bargained for when he finds the body of a murdered hiker - mutilated in a way he has witnessed once before, in Africa, years ago and thousands of miles away. The police in Nepal, anxious to quell a scandal, close the case and declare the victim a suicide. Only Paul is left to search for answers. He reaches out to his farflung tribe of fellow backpackers for help, and his discoveries lead him to a terrible conclusion: a killer is stalking the international backpacker trail, preying on victims in wild places far beyond the reach of any authorities. A killer whom Paul may already know. Finding the murderer becomes an obsession that leads Paul from Himalayan peaks, through the jungles of Indonesia, across the bleak Sahara desert -- and into some of the darkest places imaginable... Dark Places won the 2005 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Reviews "You're hooked ... the characters are delightfully delineated ... beautifully controlled ... Evans contrives to slip the necessary specialist net-head detail into the plot without being boring or patronising. He can also pin down a character with a few details deftly brushed in ... A pacy thriller for the 21st century." - The Times "A stunning debut novel from a thriller writer to watch ... a breathtaking thriller." - Western Daily Press "A taut thriller ... Evans keeps you guessing and leaves you with the uncomfortable realization of just how plausible this all could be. A real page-turner." - Ms. London "Easily the year's creepiest crime novel." - The Calgary Herald "Anyone would enjoy Evans' clever, relentlessly absorbing debut thriller that becomes a lot more than just another serial-killer mystery." - The Ottawa Citizen "It's very, very good. If you are au fait with the lore and background of international backpacking, it's probably even better ... Will there be more? I certainly hope so." - The Globe & Mail "In this haunting suspense debut, Evans takes the reader on a page-turning adventure across five continents ... (a) spooky, inventive tale." - Publishers Weekly About the Author Jon Evans's novels have been published around the world, translated into half a dozen languages, and praised by The Economist, The Times of London, and the Washington Post. His journalism has appeared in Wired, Reader’s Digest, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, and The Times of India, and he writes a weekly column for TechCrunch. He can be found online at www.rezendi.com.

Paul Wood was just a tourist in Sarajevo. Then an unexpected encounter made him a desperate woman's only hope of escape. Now, to get her to safety, he must find a way through the minefield of warlords, criminals, and peacekeepers that is postwar Bosnia.Pursued by brutal gangsters, unable to leave the country legally, Paul agrees to do a job for a shadowy group of human traffickers, in exchange for safe passage. The smugglers seem friendly. The job seems harmless. But when he discovers the secrets seething beneath, the repercussions will propel him on a perilous journey around the world - from a warlord's compound in lawless Albania, through the jungles of Latin America, and towards an explosive confrontation at the extraordinary Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert...