A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel [Audiobook][Unabridged] (Audio Cassette)

~ (Author), Jim Bond (Reader)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The chill of Michigan's Upper Peninsula doesn't cool the action in Edgar-winner Hamilton's expertly paced seventh Alex McKnight novel (after 2005's Ice Run). On an unusually frigid Fourth of July night, the retired Detroit cop and his sometime partner, Leon Prudell, save three men from a boating accident in Lake Superior's Waishkey Bay. But the men return to accuse their rescuers of stealing a locked box off the boat, and Alex discovers that they're squeezing members of the Bay Mills Indian reservation for government-financed prescription painkillers. As Alex closes in on the dealers, he narrowly avoids death. Meanwhile, his long-distance girlfriend, Ontario police officer Natalie Reynaud, goes undercover in Toronto to ferret out an illegal arms dealer. When she pays Alex a surprise visit at his Paradise, Mich., cabin, their operations intersect with tragic results. Plot turnarounds and double-crosses ensure a startling conclusion.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Hamilton, who received the Edgar Award for his first mystery, A Cold Day in Paradise (1999), is now on his seventh installment in the series starring private eye Alex McKnight, who works as a cabin curator and sometimes private eye in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. McKnight has a familiar backstory for a private eye: he is a one-time cop with a troubled past (in McKnight's case, the trauma of having his partner killed). Hamilton, however, uses McKnight's break from his former life as a way of exploring his character's efforts to escape despair and find some semblance of meaning. He found at least some of that meaning in the last adventure, Ice Run (2004), in the form of a tentative love affair with a female cop. This time the action shuttles between McKnight's attempts to stop a prescription pain-killer drug ring in Paradise, Michigan, and his girlfriend's assignment to Toronto as an undercover gun dealer. Hamilton's gamble of putting the most exciting action offstage with the girlfriend pays off big-time here. Hair-raising suspense with poignant characterization. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged Lib Ed; Unabridged edition (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423307127
• ISBN-13: 978-1423307129
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,756,084 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alex McKnight goes to war in this novel!!!!, January 11, 2007

By	Wayne C. Rogers (Las Vegas, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) (Hardcover)

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 way!

What can I say? A Stolen Season chilled me to the bone with what happens to Alex McKnight. It was totally unexpected and stunned me in a way I haven't experienced very often with a novel. I'm still dealing with it even as I write this short review. As usual the writing is excellent, the suspense is nerve wracking, a lot of people end up dead, and the story ends sooner than you would like. The author has already stated in his newsletter that it's going to be awhile before the next "Alex McKnight" novel. I had to wait two years for this book to come out, and now I have to wait another two years for the next novel. This is definitely cruel and unusual punishment from an author I have grown to like. I will say that Steve Hamilton has created a series that's every bit as good as anything James Lee Burke or Robert Parker has written. Once you get started on one of the "Alex McKnight" books, you'll want to read them all. No brag, just fact. This is a fantastic series that I highly recommend to anyone who's the least bit interested in great writing and a fictional hero that stands out with the best in literature.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb McKnight mystery, September 9, 2006

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) (Hardcover)

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

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Hit for Hamilton, May 25, 2007

By	FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) (Hardcover)

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.