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Poor Alex McKnight! He never wanted to be the hero of a mystery series. Since his Edgar-winning debut in 1999's "Cold Day in Paradise," the ex-cop, ex-baseball player created by Steve Hamilton has done everything he can to avoid getting involved in the strange happenings of Paradise, Michigan. He's not even a PI anymore, and his gun is resting somewhere on the bottom of Lake Superior. Yet McKnight is back, once again, for the fifth volume of Steve Hamilton's ever-popular series. By now the pattern of a Hamilton book is pretty well settled. Alex is alone on the Upper Peninsula, living off rental property and Canadian beer, trying to shut out the pain of his tortured past, when someone comes along to disrupt his hermit's paradise. This time, it's his Ojibwa friend Vinnie LeBlanc, an interesting minor character in several previous McKnight novels (for anti-stereotyping, how do you beat an Indian named Vinnie?). Vinnie's troubled brother Tom has disappeared with a hunting party in Canada. His family is concerned but can't contact the police, because Tom was an ex-con who left the country illegally, using Vinnie's identification. With a relatively minimal amount of grumbling, for Alex, he accompanies Vinnie to the even-more-frozen north. The rest of the book consists of a series of Hamilton trademarks - chase scenes, barfights, mysterious strangers, gunfights, warnings-off from local police, which the heroes ignore, leading to more chase scenes and gunfights, and a few trips to the hospital. There is an overall mystery - more whydunit, than who - but Alex and readers alike stay literally clueless until the very end. Hamilton can count many of crime fiction's big guns among his fans; the UK edition of "Blood" draws blurbs from Harlan Coben, George P. Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, and Laura Lippman. There certainly is a lot to like about Hamilton's writing. He handles action and dialogue exceptionally well, and his north woods settings provide a good way to cool off during a long hot summer. Still, I can’t help feeling that Hamilton is on the verge of squandering his considerable gifts on an increasingly formulaic series. The misanthropic Alex was the perfect hero for "Cold Day in Paradise," the story of a man whose past came back to haunt him in the cruelest imaginable way. That book felt as fresh and chilling as a quick dunk in ice-cold water. With each volume in the series, Alex's isolation becomes less of a character trait and more of a gimmick for the newest mystery to break through. When Alex starts this book by building a cabin all by his lonesome, it's like Harry Potter summering with the Dursleys, minus the laughs. It shouldn't have to be like this. The most lively and original moments in Hamilton's post-"Paradise" books have come from supporting characters - PI-wannabe Leon Prudell, bartender Jackie Connery in "North of Nowhere," and - most unforgettably - Alex's old baseball buddy Randy Wilkins, Lefthander and bull-artist extraordinaire, featured in "The Hunting Wind." If Hamilton can create secondary characters this interesting, it seems a shame to be stuck with morose, one-note Alex at the center of a series. Come on, Mr. Hamilton, give the guy a vacation. He never wanted this job anyway.
Reviewed by Caroline Pruett, July 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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