A Stolen Season

I am a mystery/detective novel fan. Some click and some don't. I started with Block, originally rejected but eventually got into Child, enjoy Eisler, am hot and cold (mostly) on Vachss and then for a while hit the wall. Simply could not find anyone who was not derivative and thin on character. I finally gave Hamilton a shot and basically read each of his McKnight stories in a row. They grew on me and what I liked best was each one kept getting better. He graduated as a writer. A Stolen Season is in a class of it's own, a terrific read. I simply do not know where he goes next and I assume Hamilton feels the same since he is now trying another character. However, I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next for Alex.... this one was a very good one !!!

Alex McKnight is a retired Detroit cop who can't seem to shy away from trouble. After being shot on the job and left with a bullet lodged behind his heart, McKnight moves to Paradise, Michigan, where he tries to put his life back together. His former partner is dead and his undercover police officer girlfriend, Natalie, has taken a job 500 miles away. Unsure where their relationship is heading, McKnight decides to take the time away from Natalie to sort out his life. He wants to re-build his father's old home and start a new cabin rental business on the lake. Despite his intention to live a quiet life, he soon finds himself embroiled in a series of events that occur after he witnesses a cabin cruiser smash into pilings in the lake. McKnight and his friends rescue the driver and two men but the next day they accuse him of stealing a missing lock box that was in the boat. While Alex unwittingly uncovers a drug-dealing operation, his girlfriend surprises him with a visit. Their cases have more in common than either of them realizes and the action revs up into high gear. Murder and mayhem follow McKnight as he tries to make sense of the events spinning his life out of control. Any author who writes the sequel in a successful series faces the daunting task of bringing new readers up to speed with the characters quickly, while at the same time keeping previous fans from being bored by repeating descriptions and events. It takes a while for Hamilton to reveal pertinent information about his main character's background but once the reader gets to know Alex McKnight; the pages start turning faster. Hamilton takes the reader to an unusual setting for a crime scene that involves drug trafficking and murder--the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the lake community of Paradise. The story takes place on "an unusually cold Fourth of July," but A Stolen Season is definitely a hot read.

I've been reading the "Alex McKnight" series by Steve Hamilton since it started back during the late nineties with a Cold Day in Paradise. The books have always been more character driven than action, which enables the reader to get to know the protagonist on a more intimate level, thereby making the series more fun to read. So far I've enjoyed each and every novel that Mr. Hamilton has written. I have to say, however, that the newest book in the series, A Stolen Season, steals the show. I started out reading fifty pages a night. Then, I got midway in the novel and something happened to the main character that forced me to stay up all night and finished the blasted thing. There was simply no way that I'd be able to sleep, knowing what I did. I had to find out what happened next even if it meant going a day without sleep. On one level that's what good storytelling is all about. On another, I wanted to literally grab Mr. Hamilton by the shoulders and shake him until he explained why he'd done such a tragic thing to our hero, Alex McKnight. Yeah, I know. It's only fiction. Still, when an author writes well-developed characters, the readers slowly begin to care for them as if they're close friends. In fact, I almost want to say that while the novel is being read, the characters are every bit as real as the people who live next door. Maybe more real, if you're a hermit like me. A Stolen Season starts out on two fronts. On the one end, Alex McKnight unintentionally gets involved with some unsavory characters when he and his friend Leon save three guys in a boating accident from drowning. It later turns out that the guys are mixed up in some illegal drug trafficking between the United States and Canada. Because something of value was lost during the accident, the guys think that either Alex, or one of his friends, have it. They start putting the pressure on Alex, and he immediately begins to hit back, not realizing the caliber of people that he's dealing with and how dangerous they are. Alex will underestimate the guys and ultimately find himself standing on a bluff with a handgun pointed at his face, waiting to die. On the second front, Alex's girlfriend, Natalie Reynaud, has moved to Toronto to do undercover work for the police department there. Her job is to get close to the girlfriend of one of the most terrifying men that she's ever met and to hopefully break up a ring of gun smugglers. Something eventually happens that brings the two fronts together, driving Alex McKnight to the edge of despair at the tragedy that has erupted in his life. His blood brother, Vinnie, helps him to gradually recover. It's only then that Alex decides to paint his face red with his own blood and to go to war. From that moment, Alex is on a personal mission to kill anybody who was involved in the tragedy that has changed his life forever. He no longer cares if he lives or dies. His only purpose is revenge. God help anyone who gets in his wa

Steve Hamilton has hit his stride with the latest Alex McKnight mystery. He really nails the sense of place and how the long, dark winters foster a sense of anticipation for summer that only nature can deliver in luminescent landscapes, although not always as scheduled. His regular cast of characters has become as comforting as a cold Canadian beer in a cozy Upper Peninsula tavern. And cold it is on the Fourth of July as a classic wooden Chris Craft motor boat smashes into some old pilings and starts a chain of escalating violence that stretches out to Toronto and Detroit. The present pushes him to confront the less pleasant aspects of his past like watching his Detroit police partner die of gun shot wounds and his subsequent problems with booze and pain killers. They say that God only comes down to the Lower Peninsula to golf and sail and then goes back to His country above the bridge. If you can't make it to the U.P. soon, then reading this book is the next best thing.

In the Upper Peninsular of Michigan, retired Detroit cop Alex McKnight noted how freezing the Fourth of July is this year as he stops in Brimley for a drink or two and a baseball game on TV to warm his insides though he knows summer here lasts one day. Even a brass monkey would freeze its balls off in this cold. Alex, his so-called sleuthing partner Leon Prudell (of Prudell-McKnight Investigation fame) and Coast Guard Auxiliary Tyler soon are outside in the cold rescuing three drunken men (Cap, Harry, and Brucie) from a boating accident in nearby Waishkey Bay. Not long after saving the lives of the trio, the grateful threesome return to Brimley and accuse Alex and his two friends (make that one pal and a possible bud) of stealing their locked box from their devastated boat. Angrily, Alex does a bit of investigating and learns that the gruesome threesome are extorting the Bay Mills Indian tribe out of government funded painkillers that they resell on the black market. As he continue his inquiries, his Ontario police officer girlfriend Natalie Reynaud arrives at his cabin in Paradise because her undercover illegal arms case has connections on the American side of Lake Superior that soon ties into Alex's prescription medicine investigation. The seventh McKnight mystery is a superb entry that not only brings to life the area, but also highlights a growing problem with prescription pill contraband. The story line is filled with twists and turns, and red herrings as everyone seems as if they are double crossing one another until the shocking climax. Steve Hamilton is at his Edgar best with this unnerving tale in which the chilling weather fits the mood. Harriet Klausner