A Cold Day In Paradise

Rating:
Summary: Second Outing Disappoints
Review: Although I found A Cold Day in Paradise fresh and engaging, too often the author's second effort made me feel as if I'd come upon Donald Westlake having a bad hair day. Obviously, anyone who has never read Donald Westlake wont't have this reaction and may find the goings on other than cartoonish. On the major plus side, Hamilton does have a way with cold.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth Reading
Review: The Edgar Award-winning, A Cold Day In Paradise, is a commendable first effort -- good plot, fast-moving, suspenseful, good characterization and interesting narrative. One element I was somewhat disappointed in was the element of "surprise," as I guessed a large part of the ending about midway through the book. Also, a few story threads were not tied together tightly enough for my satisfaction. Nonetheless, I enjoyed Steve Hamilton's first book a lot and a think you will too.

Rating:
Summary: A Cold Day in Paradise
Review: I thought the character development was terrific, the locale believable and the writing skilled. The only problem I had was with the plot. I did not find the instant animosity of the chief of police credible. I also was able to correctly guess what had happened to Edgar. But I'm a sucker for great characters and look forward to this author's next book.

Rating:
Summary: Edgar and Shamus Awards for Best First Novel
Review: It has the mysterious murders, the plot twists, the maniacal killer (maybe), the dame, quirky small town citizens and the hard-boiled former cop turned UP detective. I don't normally read mysteries, but I was drawn to this one at the bookstore. I have to say it was worth the price; I finished it in one sitting. Hamilton kept my interest, and I loved unwinding the mystery along with Alex McKnight (our reluctant hero). I'm now a fan and can't wait to read the latest McKnight adventure!

Rating:
Summary: Paradise is real.
Review: Yup. It's a real place, not too far from my home. And it's populated by the bartenders, drunken locals, Indian casinos, and log cabins Hamilton describes in "A Cold Day in Paradise". And greed, lies, manipulation, and terror are real, too. This compelling novel isolates those human traits, puts them in the chill of Northern Michigan, and spins a story I couldn't put down. One whole weekend I sat in my cabin in the woods, listening to the chill winds outside, reading this novel in front of my fireplace. I was in paradise.

Rating:
Summary: A Cold Day = One Hot Book!
Review: This book was very interesting. I couldn't put the book down. Have you ever had a book that you couldn't get your hands off of? Well, A Cold Day In Paradise holds you in suspense until you finish it. It definately is a page turner with another murder just waiting to happen. The best part about this book was that I couldn't guess what would happen next!

Rating:
Summary: NERVOUS MAKING
Review: What brought on my nerves was Alex McKnight. I didn't know if the hero was going to make it to the end and be able to tell us whodunnit. I agree with the reader from Berlin who puts it so well. Alex teeters in and out of reality, obsessions, compulsions and never sleeps. This last reminds me of P. Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, but she never bathes either, and Alex is faithful to long hot showers, Thank God. He certainly doesn't inspire much confidence. The scene with P.I. Prudmore displaying Alex's lack of sleuthing ability is worth the price of the book. I liked everything but how he handled the plot. When Alex is obsessively following a train of thought, the author should remember that Alex is dragging the reader right along with him. I admire the skill, but I felt I wanted off the train every now and then. His handling of location was superb. I'll be looking for more books

Rating:
Summary: Excellent debut
Review: This is the first novel in a series. I agree with the previous reader's threads. The writing is interesting and engaged, and the story is gripping and not farfetched. Maybe the biggest compliment I have for it is that I read it in one day. Couldn't put it down. I recommend it to all detective fiction fans.

Rating:
Summary: He has really been there!
Review: Mr. Hamilton is familiar with the territory in this book. He knows the Upper Peninsula and has written a first rate book about the people, the special places, and a crime that is so convoluted that it kept me guessing until the end. I live in the U. P. and am familiar with his various locales. He brings a new twist to what could have been an old story. And he makes one feel the anguish Alex goes through as he fights his fears and finally faces them. I just finished this book today, came home from work, and ordered his second one immediately. That is how impressed I am with Mr. Hamilton's writing.

Rating:
Summary: Lincoln Log PI squares the corners
Review: A COLD DAY IN PARADISE

Steve Hamilton has written a daunting, well-woven, first time out thriller that delivers. He introduces Alex McKnight - former professional base-ball player, ex-Detroit cop - who with drink, dames and drugs has managed to hold at bay the ghosts and traumas of his past.

Life's follies have turned McKnight into a low calorie version of the consummate looser. Bad knees ended what might have been a marginal stay in the Big Leagues. Later came a more promising career in law enforcement and that ended abruptly by a yellow-wigged, psycho living in a tin-foil wrapped apartment . Score that round for Rose, who during a routine surveillance strokes his own demons and, without warning, brandishes an Uzzi, fires away at McKnight and makes mincemeat of Franklin, McKnight's partner.

In the aftermath drink, depression, a broken marriage take their toll as McKnight lives and relives the shooting.The docs gave it their best.They removed two of the three slugs. The third, too close to McKnight's heart to risk an operation, remains untouched, embedded within him and, more than a permanent, transportable shrine to Franklin, its significance inescapably fused into McKnight's existence.

After all this who could blame the guy for being morose and brooding? And who cares how he spends his time on his land in Upper Michigan Peninsula, chopping wood, renting a cabin or two during the hunting season, pocketing disability checks and hoping like hell to get through the nights when the visions of Franklin, of Rose, of all the splattered blood on the aluminum foiled walls make the pills necessary?

Yet, some people are not content to let basket cases be basket cases. Not Edwin Fulton, poor faced gambler, stinkingly rich - with "friends" to help relieve just such a problem. Or Fulton's wife, Sylvia, gorgeous and bored. Or Uttley, lawyer on a mission, who recruits McKnight to be his own personal, part-time PI. And now into this sleepy, rural community comes murder, inescapably connected to McKnight's past.

Hamilton takes us on a tightrope act, entertaining and daunting. He plots a good who-done-it, keeps well within the bounds of the mystery genre. No crime fantasy here, despite what seems like a killer etherizing from a cell to outwit police and PI alike. The logic of the plot is simple, but at times blurred. Often, Hamilton goes interior, churning through McKnight's fears and desperation, building suspense, juggling scorecards and bringing into doubt McKnight's own mental stability. For a good portion of COLD DAY, the tethering back and forth on the possibility that McKnight has no enemy - no stalker - tries Hamilton's handling of his material and tweaks our sense of being hoodwinked. Is he pulling the baseball cap over our eyes and keeping the reader purposely at a loss so he can find a suitable conclusion to what would seem to be an impossible situation? This is the book's curiously daunting element . As COLD DAY unfolds, the reader begins to fathom the notion that Hamilton is playing loose and fast with details we need to have - in deed, must have - allowing us to be cleverly challenged and to make a run for the solution but not haplessly deceived by an author who has exited the parkway of inspiration. To his credit, Hamilton steers a straight course and in a rather remarkable way he parlays what might otherwise be a growing sense of reader flimflammery into a structural, satisfying element that serves his purpose. At the novel's conclusion we are left with the only singular outcome possible and gives us cause to reflect upon the balancing act of crime detection's age old mighty questions: "Who did it?" and "Why?"

Schalti Berlin 21.Aug. 1999