Rating: 
Summary: ...Never Gives Up Her Dead...
Review: This is another full-strength North Woods mystery from Edgar Award winning author Steve Hamilton. Sufficient background information is provided that a reader would not necessarily need to start at the beginning with "A Cold Day in Paradise," - but why miss all the fun and excitement? Alex McKnight, former Detroit cop, former Major League Baseball player for a day, currently cabin concierge cum reluctant investigator in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP) signs on to help Ojibwa buddy Vinnie LeBlanc (Misquogeezhig - Red Sky) locate his wayward brother, last seen "guiding" a bunch of Detroit chimookomanag. This leads McKinight and LeBlanc through Northern Ontario - but it ain't no lightweight Bob Hope/Bing Crosby Road Movie. It's a taut tale, often bleak and gritty as the two, with help from friends and family back home in the UP, search for answers in the mysterious North. It's a fine addition to the Hamilton oeuvre. Reviewed by TundraVision
Rating:
Summary: A-1
Review: This is the best mystery written yet by Steve Hamilton, and his
writing skills have to be experienced to be believed.
If a reader can read his description of being lost in the north
of Canada, while alone, and not feel some of the nervousinous
of being lost themselves, then such reader must not be concentrating on the exposition.
Here, hero Alex McKnight, a semi-retired Detroit cop who has sought the refuge of a lonely existence up in the U.P., is drawn into helping his equally-reclusive neighbor, Vinnie, a member of the local Ojibwa tribe. Vinnie's brother hasn't returned from guiding a hunting party into the wilds of Ontario,
and the family is worried. Vinnie especially so because he has
loaned his ID to the brother because his brother is a convicted
felon and would get into serious trouble for leaving Michigan
to go into Canada.
Vinnie finally explains to Alex why he did such a stupid thing,
but that only encourages Alex to "sign up" and agree to help
Vinnie look for the missing group.
So off they go, driving along the shore of Lake Superior, into
the northern wilds of Ontario, and they keep driving until they
run out of road and have to go off-road to a desolate lake, where they meet a group in the process of closing up their lodge. All hunters have already left, and the lodge staff is getting ready to return home for the winter, perhaps for good.
Alex and Vinnie have to explore further, and they run into Detroit mobsters, unhelpful Indians, a couple of bar brawlers,
as well as an unlikely team of Ontario Provincial Police constables.
Hamilton's descriptions of the drive along Lake Superior, the
isolated hunting lodge, the encounters with moose and black bear, the enforced overnight stay in the town of Wawa (where Alex remarks that Wawa is not the kind of town a guy would want to spend a vacation in), is so on-the-mark, a perceptive reader
will feel the cold, damp wind in his face and hear the un-Godly
growls of large carnivores in the dark of the night as he follows McKnight in his search for the truth.
Author Hamilton's powers of description show such intimacy with
the features and characteristics of the places and lives in desolate areas of N. Ontario, he has to have experienced them.
And even at that, only the best writer could convey a reader to those same places and same feelings.
Those isolated places of the North are examples of a different
level of civilization from what most of us experience, and for the reader willing to live that life, even briefly, this book is
a must.
Plus, after years of living alone with his thoughts and worries
in Paradise, Michigan, he meets an eye-catching OPP Constable he wishes he could have met under better circumstances, and Alex can't quite get her out of his mind. Even as his legal
situation deteriorates, and he and Vinnie end up in a holding cell at the OPP detachment in Hearst, Ontario, Alex keeps wondering just what kind of woman the distant Constable is.
And Alex even gets another unexpected benefit when Vinnie's mother "adopts" him into her Ojibwa family, as Alex tries his
hardest to understand and explain what happened to Vinnie's brother in the northern wilds.
Hamilton is also so good at his descriptions of his subjects' feelings, and his powers of observation, many readers will get
tired during all of Alex's numerous trips up and down the highway,
to such places as Detroit, Sault St.Marie, Wawa, Hearst,
Sudbury, Timmons, and more, because we feel like we are riding
along with him, fighting fatigue and pain with nothing but coffee and the knowledge that time is running against us.
Join the ride and fight and go along with Alex McKnight on this
new exciting and dangerous adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Great Suspense
Review: This is the fifth book in the Alex McKnight series about a former cop turned rental agent that works in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, on the shore of Lake Superior. We start out with Alex rebuilding his cabin that has burned to the ground. He is doing this in late fall and it appears he might not get it built before the winter snows start. Alex appears to be surviving from some dark things from his past and doesn't want to ask for help and is using this as a healing exercise. A friend of his by the name of Vinnie, an Ojibwa Indian, offers to help him rebuild the cabin and tells him that he is doing everything the wrong way. Vinnie doesn't show up to help Alex one day and Alex being the good friend that he is goes looking for him. Vinnie has given his brother Tom his driver's license, because Tom has had trouble with the law in the past. Tom needs this identification to leave the U S and enter Canada to take some Americans on a moose hunt. Tom doesn't return and Alex and Vinnie try to follow the trail of where he could be and why he hasn't returned home. This trip takes them all over the Interior of Canada to areas that are not reached by vehicle but by float planes and at times it appears they will not survive. Without some of the Indian survival techniques they might not. This book is filled with Indian Folk Lore, laughter and with tears, which in my book rates 5 stars. The suspense was the kind that keeps you turning the pages. Alex is a very troubled man in this book and you can feel his pain in the pages, but it also is a very healing experience for him and a very interesting transition happens. I am hopeful that Mr. Hamilton will be writing the sequel to this book as I would love to see the development of Alex and possibly even that of his adopted brother Vinnie.
Rating:
Summary: another great page turner
Review: This is yet another great story in the McKnight series that I was sorry to see end. The descriptions and characters are so realistic that the reader really does feel like they're right in the story. I was glad to see that Vinnie had such a prominant role in this story and would hope that he is around in future installments. As with all of the other books in the series, this book does a very good job in getting the reader "caught up" in case they haven't read the other books but with this story I would suggest at least reading "North of Nowhere" first.
Rating:
Summary: strong McKnight tale
Review: Though it is October and winter is establishing its frozen grip on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Alex McKnight begins rebuilding his devastated cabin. The ex everything (minor-league catcher, cop, and private investigator, et al) feels he must complete this job now as his humble abode, wrecked by a nut case, once belonged to his dad. His stoic best friend Vinnie "Red Sky" LeBlanc reluctantly helps though he thinks Alex should add asylum time to his resume. Works stops when Vinnie learns that his brother Tom, a professional guide currently escorting a group in the Canadian woods, is lost. This seems out of character for a skilled expert like Tom, which worries Vinnie as much as his concern that his sibling's parole officer might learn about the parole violation of crossing the border. Vinnie heads north while Alex follows his friend. Neither realizes that the biting cold is not the nightmare on this journey. Edgar and Shamus Award winner, Steve Hamilton has written his best mystery to date, which seems impossible, as the McKnight series is one of the best of the last few years. The story line twists and turns keeping the reader guessing as to what the heroes will find behind the next corner yet keeps a fast albeit cold pace without losing the prime plot. In spite of the frozen tundra, Alex seems warmer yet not mellower than he has previously appeared and the support cast provides the depth to a grand slam tale. Harriet Klausner
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