Steve Hamilton A Stolen Season

A Stolen Season

Steve Hamilton

Dunne, Sep 2006, $22.95

ISBN 031235360X

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