Jon Rankin started his first novel over 20 years ago but lest you think he has agonized over it for decades, he hasn’t! As a busy criminal defense lawyer in actual life, he didn’t sit down to write often. When he did, the story came easily. So easily that—in what is sure to elicit both envy and astonishment in other writers—he does not go back and edit. His publisher, Rare Bird Books, did that with some input from Jon. The result is Running from the Sunrise, a “hard-boiled detective story on the beaches of Florida and Southern California.”

The novel was inspired by Jon’s fondness for film noir. That means murder and romance and a private investigator named Marty Randolph. Marty has just met the woman of his dreams. He then has the misfortune of crossing paths with a high-profile serial killer in a routine background case. As the killer eludes the police and Marty’s romance burgeons, his new flame learns just how dangerous Marty’s job can be.

Asked what crime novelists have influenced him, Jon cites Lawrence Block and Janet Evanovich. No doubt, real life has too: some of the characters he has encountered in his practice would be right at home in his novel. Jon follows the one piece of advice he has for aspiring novelists: the classic “write what you know.” Despite this, Jon says that neither Marty nor any other character is modeled on someone from real life and none of the novel is set in Northern California, including Tiburon, his long-time residence. Which is not to say that he hasn’t drawn bits and pieces of characters and events from his own life but he assures us that they would only rarely be identifiable. Perhaps that assurance puts some of our readers at ease.

Despite the ease with which he writes, Jon did spend time honing his craft. Like many writers from around the Bay Area, he connected with a teacher through Book Passage in Corte Madera. He took workshops from Stephanie Moore, an admired teacher whose death from ovarian cancer several years later left him adrift and not writing for a while. He has also worked on a memoir, but his publisher politely asked if he wrote fiction as it’s more marketable.

Like many first novelists, he has discovered how much of the publishing process is out of his hands. Rare Bird did not use the cover he suggested, sent him two to choose from and then used the one he didn’t choose. And despite getting only a few copies of his own novel, he has a plan for some of them: over the years, when he has finished reading a book, he has sometimes left it on the book cart at the county jail (much to the amusement of Lawrence Block); the occasional signed copy of the book he has now finished writing will end up there too.

Running from the Sunrise was published August 15, and, fittingly, Book Passage hosted a book launch on August 23. Jon will host a few other events, usually called “readings” except that he doesn’t like to read from the novel so he tells stories. If the novel is as good as his stories, it will be quite the success.