Customer Reviews

Blood Is the Sky (Alex McKnight Series)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Blood Is The Sky - Steve Hamilton

This was my first Alex McKnight novel and it blew me away.

Alex McKnight, former Detroit police detective, beings to rebuild his previously destroyed (the last book maybe) log cabin in Paradise, Michigan, when a friend appears with bad news. Vinnie has lost his brother and needs Alex's help to find him. The two set off on a trail which takes them into the mountains and lakes of deepest Canada.

Switched identities, fearsome bears, moose with bad road sense and a deep, dark conspiracy test Alex and Vinnie's resilience and relationship to the limit. At once sad and funny, Hamilton has a great way of describing his surroundings, in what is obviously a well researched or well loved locality. You can feel the cold clammy weather under your shirt and you can imagine the miles and miles of unbroken forestland ahead of you. The camaraderie between Alex and Vinnie is excellent and all the other characters are carefully drawn.

In summary; great characters and an excellent plot, with a few twists to keep you on your feet, make this a sure fire award winner in the thriller genre.

Highly recommended.

Andrew Poole

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

I've read them all, and each one is better than the last. Buy it. You won't be disappointed.

Blood is the Sky recaptures that feeling of danger-at-every-turn excitement that got me hooked on this series when I read A Cold Day in Paradise. That was something that I thought was really lacking in North of Nowhere and Winter of the Wolf Moon. We also start to see some real development and progress in Alex as a character, and the way this book ends really makes you look forward to the next novel.

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.

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

I'm a bit torn. I think McKnight is a good writer, and I've enjoyed this series overall. But I don't know if I'll rush to put these books on the top of my TBR pile when they come out in the future. I think part of the reason for this is that Hamilton just doesn't seem inclined to give readers a traditional mystery. I imagine that there are some for whom this is a blessing. But I just don't know how much longer I can put up with McKnight's "reluctant investigator" persona.

In this book, Alex decides to help out his friend Vinnie, first introduced in _Winter of the Wolf Moon_. Vinnie is an Ojibwa Indian and he's worried because his brother Tom is overdue in returning from a moose hunt in Canada. To make things worse, because he was just recently released from prison and is on parole, Tom isn't supposed to leave the country, so Vinnie loaned him his identification.

Alex and Vinnie drive north to the isolated hunting lodge where Tom and his party of hunters, a group from Detroit, were to head out into the wilderness. They find the owners of the camp shutting things down, for probably the last time, since the number of hunting parties coming there has been dropping steadily. According to the man who owns the lodge, Tom and his group came back on schedule and drove off in their SUV. When the vehicle is later found abandoned on a local Indian reservation, things begin to look suspicious.

There are some great things in this book. Hamilton does a very good job with character, creating real, believable people who it is a pleasure to spend time with. Also, the book does a great job of exploring male friendship and the lengths to which people are willing to go to help each other out. Vinnie had sent Tom on the hunt in the first place because he was scared his brother might try to commit suicide and he thought the trip was just what he needed. And people are constantly commenting on the lengths to which Alex goes to help out Vinnie.

This brings up another of Hamilton's strengths, which is his descriptions of nature and setting. When Alex and Vinnie convince an old Indian guide, Maskwa, to fly them out to the isolated lake where Tom and his hunting party were last seen, the two of them decide to stay there overnight. They can't foresee the sequence of events that will leave them stranded, with no way to get a message back to civilization, at the mercy of at least one unknown person armed with a high-powered rifle. This sequence, which lasts for a couple of chapters, contains some of the most vivid descriptions of the outdoors that I've encountered for awhile.

The thing that really threw me though is the whole mystery aspect of the book. Just what is going on and what happened to Tom and the hunting party is left unexplained until the very end. There just isn't a lot of investigating going on in the book. Instead, the book turns into a travelogue of Vinnie and Alex driving around, asking questions, trying to find some trace of the missing hunters. All of their driving around is presented in quite a bit of detail, including several trips back and forth from northern Ontario to Paradise, Michigan, the series' home. The solution to the mystery, ultimately, is sad and satisfying, but it is so delayed as to be rather annoying. There isn't even a hint about what's going on until the last couple of chapters.

I guess I'd recommend the book, but I'm still waiting for Hamilton to recapture some of the magic of earlier books in the series, particularly _Winter of the Wolf Moon_, my favorite so far. I hope the next book, if there is one, will be a bit more traditional.

After his recent adventures, chronicled in the previous book North Of Nowhere, Alex McKnight is attempting to pick up the pieces of his life by rebuilding his cabin with the help of Vinnie Le Blanc, an Ojibwa indian who is his friend and neighbour. Breaking the reverie that comes with the rebuilding process is news that Vinnie's brother Tom is way overdue from a hunting expedition in Canada where he was to act as a guide. The two men decide to head north in a bid to track Tom's movements and try to find him. From here the story turns into a fight for survival in the wilds of North Canada.

As Alex and Vinnie uncover the story of what happened up at the hunting lodge, more questions come up than are answered. They realise too late that their lives have become endangered but can't work out why. Of course, they aren't given terribly long to work on the why part of the question because they are kept busy working overtime trying to save their own skins.

It's a tantalising thriller that had me guessing right up towards the very end. Thrown in with this are the wonderful descriptions of the untamed wilderness of Ontario that was brilliantly captured by Hamilton. I found the story compelling reading on more than just one level making it doubly enjoyable.

I am reading this series all out of order and don't recommend doing it if you can avoid it. However, it works either way. As I said, this book is quite complicated, and I never did really guess the cause of all the killing that had happened. Lots of harrowing experiences lost in the woods with huge bears for Alex and Vinnie to survive and find a way out of the woods with no real help. A very enjoyable read which I accomplished in 2 days. So it will drag you right into it. I do like this series, and think I've now read them all. Nice work.

Alex McKnight is attempting to pick up the pieces of his life by rebuilding his log cabin with the help of Vinnie Le Blanc, an Ojibwa indian who is his friend and neighbour.

Works stops when Vinnie learns that his brother Tom who is a professional guide currently escorting a group in the Canadian woods, is lost. Vinnie had given his brother Tom, his driver's license, because Tom (who looks very much like Vinnie) 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.

Vinnie now worries that his sibling's parole officer might learn about the parole violation of crossing the border on someone else drivers license. Vinnie heads north searching for his brother while Alex follows his friend to help.

This is a fast pace story, sea planes landing on lakes, hunting cabins, bears, flying foxes, people going missing lots of twists and turns to keep you interested.