A Cold Day in Paradise

Alex McKnight was a cop in Detroit, but that ended 14 years earlier when he was shot three times by a madman called Rose. Rose also killed McKnight’s partner, and he left McKnight with a bullet lodged to near his heart and spine for safe removal. After his recovery, he moved to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan where his father had built some hunting lodges that McKnight had inherited and was now renting out. Recently McKnight got talked into getting his license to be a private investigator. This is the first in an 11-book series, several of which have already been reviewed in the blog.

This 1998 book, A Cold Day in Paradise, introduces the reader to McKnight and the cast of characters that will be developed in the course of Hamilton’s novels. Roy Maven is the highly irritable and troublesome Chief of Police, Leon Prudell is an investigator who has been displaced by McKnight, and Jackie is the owner of the Glasgow Inn which is central to life in McKnight’s Paradise, Michigan.

In this story, two bookies are grotesquely murdered, and clues are left that tie their deaths to the man who shot McKnight. But Rose is still in maximum security at the Jackson State Prison, so how could he have done this? Ultimately, I found the story to be absurd. As much as I like Hamilton’s characters, this is not the best of his books. I would put this series about McKnight in my category of “airplane books,” something to distract you on a cross-country flight, but which not keep you awake if you needed to grab a nap. Still, I keep getting drawn back to Hamilton, so have a look.

Die a Stranger

I’m a fan of Steve Hamilton, and this is the sixth book of his that I’ve read. So far, I’m the only one in MRB who has reviewed his novels. His most recent book, vintage 2012, is another Alex McKnight novel. McKnight is the protagonist, and the action in this novel takes place all over Michigan. He used to be a cop in Detroit, but got run out of the force and settled in the UP (Upper Peninsula). Now, he’s an occasional PI. Despite the rural setting in which he lives, McKnight finds trouble, or it finds him. His neighbor is Vinnie Red Sky LeBlanc, an Ojibwa Indian from the Bay Mills Indian Community, a reservation. Vinnie chose to leave his reservation, a decision that most of his Indian brother do not understand or condone. He found life there to be smothering. Even though they see each other almost every day and they’ve been best friends for years, being bound to their own mutual machismo, Alex and Vinnie hardly talk to each other. This is a book about Vinnie getting in unexpected trouble when he responds to a late night call from his Bay Mills cousin who got in bed with guys that are moving drugs across the border from Canada. And, these drug boys have adopted the tactics of the most brutal drug lords from south of the border, kill anyone who gets in the way. Hamilton introduced some good new characters, and his subplots dovetailed nicely with the main story. The beginning of this book was good, and the ending was excellent. I did not see the big ending twist coming, and it provided good theater. But, the middle of the book was draggy as McKnight literally chased clues all over the state, up and down, East and West. That was too much, and it felt as if Hamilton was just working hard to pad the length of the book rather than adding to the drama. All in all, it was an average read.

Night Work and North of Nowhere by Steve Hamilton

Two more by Hamilton who has become one of my favorites. Night Work is not about Alex McKnight, but about a probation officer, Joe Trumbull. All the women in Joe's life are coming to a bad end, starting with the woman he was about to marry who was killed while he was at his bachelor party. The dialogue and character development are typical of Hamilton -- a good and entertaining read. North of Nowhere is about Alex McKnight who is pulled out of his reclusive life style by friend Jackie, owner of the Glasgow Inn in Paradise in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Jackie insists that McKnight go with him to a poker game, and there is a take-over robbery of the house in which the game is happening. The novel is about McKnight's effort to figure out who and why, while dealing with crazy accusations that he had a part in it. I will keep Hamilton in my vacation rotation.
West Coast Don

The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Novel by Steve Hamilton

This is one of the early Alex McKnight series. We knew that he played in the minor leagues for the Tigers, and suddenly one of his pitchers, Randy Wilkins, one who got a memorable call up to the majors when he got lit up in his only major league appearance, one who Alex has not seen in 30 years, reappears. He enlists McKnight to help him find a woman, Maria, with whom he fell in love, also 30 years ago. She is a stunningly beautiful woman, who is a con-woman, just as Wilkins turns out to be a con-man. The chase takes them back to Detroit, to the neighborhood outside Tiger Stadium, and then to other venues in Michigan. Even though the story takes place in the spring time, Hamilton captures the feel of the late winter weather in the Northern Peninsula. This was entertaining, but not a “must read.”

West Coast Don

Ice Run: An Alex McKnight Novel by Steve Hamilton

This is my third Hamilton novel and my second in the Alex McKnight series. It is a follow-up to the last McKnight, Blood Is the Sky. It has the same characters: McKnight, damaged hero, former Detroit cop, and former PI who’s in mid existential crisis and trying to figure out what to do with his life; Jackie, the owner of the local pub; Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibwa Indian who has moved off the reservation; and Leon Prudell, McKnight’s former PI partner. All alone in the woods of Michigan’s UP (as in Upper Peninsula), McKnight decides to learn more about Natalie Reynaud, the detective that he encountered in Canada during the last novel. She is in her own life crisis (too young to be mid-life) with regard to the events from Blood in the Sky as well as her own very dysfunctional family of origin. She managed to keep her rage about having been sexually abused by playing high school and college hockey, usually against the boys, and the sex scenes in this book sometimes sound like a vigorous rugby scrum. She has relationship problems, so the match with McKnight is explosive. The story develops from McKnight’s and Reynaud’s decision to have a tryst in Sault Ste. Marie which leads to their chance encounter with a man, Simon Grant, who knew one of their families and who leaves a mysterious clue about that before he dies in a deep winter snow and then has his body cut in two by a snow plow. Nice picture, eh?! The story takes us back to the murder of a Reynaud's father during the Prohibition Era when there was a lot of organized crime action smuggling booze across the Canadian border. Hamilton does a good job with the narrative and character development. It is a good plot with good twists that I did not always see coming. This was not a great book, but I’ll continue to read Hamilton. At minimum, this is a good “airplane book,” and when Hamilton is at his best, like with Lock Artist, he’s very entertaining.

West Coast Don

Blood is the Sky by Steve Hamilton

This is my second novel by Hamilton, the first having been The Lock Artist. My enthusiasm for him continues, and after reading Blood in the Sky, I’ve immediately bought three more of his books. I have obviously moved him into the top echelon of my power authors, along with Daniel Silva, Robert Crais, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Vince Flynn. I’d include Stieg Larsson, but he’s dead after leaving us with only three novels. This is one of Hamilton’s Alex McKnight series, and he seems to be a damaged hero, a former cop along the likes of Elvis Cole. Since Hamilton grew up in Detroit, he uses Michigan and the surrounding area for his venue.

In this story, McKnight is living in a secluded cabin that someone has burned to the ground, and to grieve the loss of the cabin, originally built by his father, McKnight decides to rebuild it. He accepts the help of his neighbor, Vinnie, an Indian who has moved off his nearby reservation. Vinnie, a longtime friend, eventually confesses that his brother, Tom, is missing. Tom is an ex-con and he has taken Vinnie’s identity to go into Canada (a parole violation) as a guide for a hunting party. The hunting party turns out to be a group of guys that are “heavy hitters” from Detroit, their leader being Red Albright. In order to solve the mystery, McKnight pulls in help from his former partner, Leon Prudell (does it sound like Cole needing help from Joe Pike – yes, but the characters are very different from both Cole and Pike). To tell you more would give away too much of the plot. I liked the narrative that carried the book, and here is one line that I thought was pretty funny: “There is crime in Detroit. There is crime in Detroit like there are fountains in Paris, like there are canals in Venice. People all over the world know this about Detroit. It might not be fair to think that way. You can look at the art museum and the new ballpark and the casinos and restaurants and believe its all part of the Detroit Renaissance, and maybe you’d be right. You can even love the place like I do. But it’s still Detroit, and always will be.”

West Coast Don

The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

This was a great story, and I think we may have a new author to add to Kirkendall’s “power” list. It is about Michael who suffers a great tragedy at the age of 8 that costs him the lives of his parents, but the reader does not learn the details of the tragedy until near the end of the book. But, from the outset, one learns that the trauma has left Michael, a.k.a., “The Boy Wonder,” completely mute. After the loss of his parents, he is raised by a caring and loving uncle, although one who is pretty busy with his own life. The story opens when he is 17 years old and in his junior year of high school. Michael serendipitously finds that he is fascinated with locks, all kinds of locks. He becomes astute at picking locks and opening combination locks, but the wrong people learn of his talent and draw him into being a criminal “specialist,” a safecracker. The story artfully bounces from to his angst as a mute teenager trying to fit in with others, and his struggle with the old demons that are tied to the deaths of his parents. It jumps forward to the bigger crimes to which he gets pulled into age the age of 18 and 19. Of course, as he moves around the country at the whim of the mysterious arch criminal, there is a link to his home town and the girl, Amelia, from high school who he loves. Hamilton has given his protagonist a remarkable and sensitive artistic talent, and he uses his ability to draw as his primary method of communicating with Amelia. As I write this review, I concerned that it comes across with more schmaltz than I got from reading the book. I liked this work and look forward to more of Hamilton’s books.

West Coast Don