If you have certain preconceptions about the lives of computer programmers, I heartily recommend you set them aside and read Blood Price, the new novel by Jon Evans. In Dark Places, Evans’ first novel, Paul Wood, computer programmer and world traveller, has spent years enjoying the fruits of the dot-com bubble, working at a job that has paid well and allowed him to take four months off every year to quench his wanderlust.

When Blood Price opens it’s 2003, the bubble has burst, and a much poorer Wood is checking out the sights in war-torn Bosnia. He’s with his girlfriend Talena to visit her old friends and her half-sister. Their relationship has lasted two years and appears to be ending soon. Wood accepts responsibility but can’t seem to muster the energy to try to save what they once had.

Before readers have a chance to wallow in his depression, Wood witnesses a group of people-smugglers drive off with a family of Tamils. Then he finds the five-year-old child they left behind. What to do? Grab the child, hail a cab, follow the criminals out of Sarajevo into the dark countryside to a locked gate, and, finally, knock on the door of an abandoned factory where the smugglers are hiding their human cargo, and return the child to his family. It’s Wood the traveller who stumbles into this trouble but it’s Wood the programmer who helps carry the plot and solve the crimes. Wood and his loyal tribe of friends back home aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty when it comes to the rough stuff, either.

Reading Blood Price reminded me of being a kid running down a too-steep hill, going faster and faster so that you can barely get your feet in front of you quickly enough, loving every second of it. You can’t stop. You don’t want to stop. Evans occasionally had me doubting that one well-meaning computer nerd could find himself in the middle of so much criminal activity, but I didn’t care. I wanted to keep reading to find out what the hell happened next.