Customer Reviews

Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex Mcknight Mystery)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The feeling of ease and comfort with his main character are immediate in this newest Steve Hamilton story featuring his Numero Uno detective, Alex McKnight. The last McKnight story was six years ago. This has been one of my favorite series over the years and I was truly waiting for this latest installment. This one did not disappoint.

The story starts with an eerie preface that alludes to the upcoming events and then immediately a well done background of the characters and past events is done by Hamilton - and it was done just right - so as not to leave out readers that had not been fortunate enough to have found this series years ago. In the previous five stories, Hamilton takes one of the main characters and places them in danger with Alex on the trail. In this one, Chief Maven and McKnight, Maven's arch enemy in the Paradise area, are placed together as they attempt to unravel the madman with which they are entangled.

The writing is crisp, the dialogue is genuine and humor dry and without forced effort. The story is complex and moves at a good pace. The rhythm is just right between the characters and the storyline. There is very little not to like in this novel. If I had to pick something it would be the fact that Alex could remain ahead of the FBI on the trial of the bad guys. However, that said, the story never felt forced or fake.

There is plenty to like in this installment, and it can play very well without going back into the series. There are several lines in the story about past incidents and they will make you want to start at the beginning of this series. I would rate this as the best of the six books by Hamilton that I have read. Definitely one for the pile of reading material, especially if this is your genre.

Misery Bay is the ninth installment in Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight series. Like the others, this one takes place in Michigan's upper penninsula. Hamilton capture's perfectly the bitter cold, ice and winds off Lake Superior, the bleakness of the landscape, and the isolation of its inhabitants. In this book, McKnight joins forces, albeit reluctantly, with his nemesis, Chief Roy Maven, whose friend's son has committed suicide. The friend is distraught with the enormity of his loss. McKnight agrees to investigate what could have driven the boy to suicide, if only to bring the man some peace of mind. Then, the man, himself, is murdered--in Chief Maven's home. Other suicides come to light, always children of law officers, and in each case, the officer is subsequently murdered. No one except Maven and McKnight see the pattern. The FBI sees coincidence. And, scattered thoroughout the book, between chapters, are snippets of conversation from filming sessions. Slowly the reader begins to suspect what might be going on. Equally as slowly, McKnight and Maven unravel the mystery. The final few chapters bring it together with McKnight alone and in great danger. Gripping conclusion. A must read for Hamilton fans!

I've read everything he's written. And this wasn't bad in any way. It was entertaining, but they're all pretty much the same plot, just with different killers. Someone comes into the bar to try and get him to help. He doesn't want to, but reluctantly agrees. He winds up driving all over Michigan, and sometimes into Canada. Sometimes he falls in love, sometimes he doesn't. The murders are solved and he goes back to the bar. There's some snow plowing and cabin building thrown in for the DIY set. So if you've read all of the previous books, unless you're really bored, there's nothing new here. If you're just looking for a book to kill a few evernings...have at it.

Once again Steve Hamilton takes us to the town of Paradise in the Upper Peninsula-the UP-of Michigan, the home of Alex McKnight in the latest in a fine series. McKnight is a former Detroit policeman, for a short time a private investigator, and the full-time proprietor of cabins he rents to snowmobilers during the long UP winters.

To his surprise, the chief of police with whom he's almost always at odds, asks him as a favor to help a friend. The investigation of the suicide of the friend's son leads him to discover other similar deaths. The police chief and McKnight form an uneasy alliance to link the deaths and to try to prevent more killings in a fast-paced, absorbing tale.

Fans of Hamilton's books will find the Paradise regulars in residence as well as the Scottish pub where McKnight socializes and drinks his beer brought in from Canada for him by the owner. This is a book that those new to the series will enjoy and perhaps lead them back to the beginning to read the others. Warning: Best read in the summer months if the reader is sensitive to snow and ice!

I haven't read any of Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight books so this one was a pleasant surprise. It did take me about 10 or 15 pages to catch on to the author's writing rhythm but once found I sailed right through this terrific story.

Hamilton posed the question: what happens when a cranky and antagonistic police chief hooks up with a younger ex-cop to investigate a series of suspicious suicides and grisly murders. The answer is a story that is a solid read that pushes you to keep turning the pages even when the dog is barking to go out.

Hamilton's characters are believable, interesting and in some cases, sympathetic.

I knew cops like both of these guys during my 29 years in law enforcement.

I'm off to get another Alex McKnight book.

I really love the Alex McNight novels. I looked forward to this one and I will look forward to the next one. Some of them have been absolutely brilliant, so atmospherically desolate and desperate that it was hard to breathe and read at the same time. This book was suspenseful (mostly) and certainly was well-written, but didn't quite come up to the standard of some of the previous novels.

The biggest problem with the book, as I see it, is that it starts out by telling you how bad things are going to get, rather than setting it up so you come to that conclusion on your own. I've never liked that in a mystery novel and I think it does a disservice to this one. The second problem is that Hamilton is true to his scene and it doesn't do him any favors -- characters spend hours and hours driving from one end of Michigan to the other, and, although we're not counting mileposts or anything, it does slow things down and string things out. If he is going to have the action take place in different parts of the state, he really doesn't have any choice, and I respect the desire to include more of the features and interest of this diverse and lovely place... but all the driving made me really tired!

In this book, Alex more or less teams up with Police Chief Roy Maven, a man who hasn't had much good to say about Alex previously and the reverse is also true. The circumstances and the dynamics between the two are very well done and make this a much more interesting book than it would have been otherwise.

The book does definitely build on the earlier books in the series; if you think you might like these books, I strongly recommend that you start at the beginning with "A Cold Day in Paradise." If you start now, you can be done with #9 before Misery Bay is out, and you'll have loads of fun in the meantime!

Alex McKnight is an ex-cop and occasional private investigator who lives the quiet life in northern Michigan. One cold winter's night, he receives a visit from his adversary, Police Chief Roy Maven. But this time round, Maven has come to ask for a favor. The teenage son of Maven's former partner has committed suicide (in aptly named Misery Bay), and the boy's grieving father is desperate to know why he might have done this. Alex reluctantly agrees to talk to the boys' friends, and it seems that the matter will end there. Until something happens which makes it clear that in fact things are far from settled.

I love Hamilton's writing because it's as much about the characters as it is about the mystery, but make no mistake - this is a terrific mystery that develops at a steady pace, twisting and turning and building tension as it goes. I was reminded in some ways of Lee Child's book Visitor, when Reacher is more of a sleuth than a muscle man. The action takes place across Michigan and you get a very tangible sense of what the different places are like (and yes, they are all real places).

This is the eighth book in the Alex McKnight series. It's not necessary to have read the others, but you'll pick up more nuances in the characters' interactions if you have. Plus, it's a terrific series. The first book is A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight Mysteries).

This was my first Hamilton or McKnight book, and I must say I will be reading more. This is an engaging, suspenseful, interesting book. Plotting, characterizations, and setting are all very well done. I won't ruin the story, but you'll feel like you're there, and you'll be engrossed in the UP setting (I've been there, but even if I hadn't, I would feel like I was). I'm pretty picky about suspense novels, mostly because I feel like most of them are ho-hum and fail to set themselves apart from all of the others...but this was a very good read. I'll be picking up some more of Hamilton's books and will be eager to read them.

I chose to read this book because I was in the mood for a mystery and because I like Michigan's Upper Penninsula--not because I've read the previous books in this series by Steve Hamilton. If I would have know there were other books in this series, I probably wouldn't have ordered it: Because I usually find that if I don't start at the beginning of a series, I do not get the whole picture. So, that's what I want to convey most to you: Being part of a series did not affect the "read".

I liked it: I liked the main characters, and I liked the story line. It was interesting from the first page, and I couldn't guess the ending--until the very last few chapters. The conversations and thought processes did not sound contrived. The "read" had a nice, quick pace--I could put it down, but I was anxious to pick it back up again.

There are plenty of reviews out there to tell you more about the story line, mood and the rest of the series. I will gladly spend money on other Steve Hamilton books.

This one has more twists than a hangman's noose. Alex McKnight is a part time private investigator and a full time retired Detroit police officer with a bullet lodged near his heart. He is reluctantly drawn from his rustic cabin in Paradise, Michigan, into the investigation of an apparent suicide of a young college student. The father, a U. S. Marshal, just wants to know why. Why would his son hang himself? Before Alex can report back from Misery Bay, the scene of the suicide, he finds the body of the marshal murdered in the home of a local police chief. With the image of the slain officer still in his mind, Alex learns of a report of a state trooper's son committing suicide by shooting himself in the head. A weird coincidence or something more? Frozen Upper Michigan warms up as McKnight turns up the heat on a murder case that has every law enforcement agency from the City Police, the State Troopers, to the F.B.I. investigating this mysterious series of deaths. Little do they know this is only the beginning. Another great mystery in the Alex McKnight series, see A Cold Day in Paradise, from this Edgar Award winning author. Provided for review by the well read folks at Amazon Vine.