Winter of the Wolf Moon: An Alex McKnight Mystery (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)

Amazon.com Review Snow doesn't just fall on cedars on Michigan's Upper Peninsula: it coats everything, mobile and inanimate, in a treacherously quick, dangerously thick blanket of white. As Alex McKnight observes, gazing out the window of his cabin in Paradise, "It looked like about six inches of new snow. Around here, that qualifies as scattered flurries." Given this climate, the urge to hibernate is perfectly understandable--batten down the hatches, throw another log on the fire, and wait until the spring thaw. For Alex, the denning impulse is as much psychological as it is physical. Haunted by memories of his deadly failures as a cop, a private investigator, and a lover, Alex wants nothing more than to plow his driveway, be cordial to the snowmobilers who rent his cabins, and lower his core emotional temperature to the forgetting point. Unfortunately, he's got friends who get in the way of his seasonal plans. When Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibwa Indian, convinces Alex to fill in as goalie for his hockey team, slap shots and hard checks are soon the least of his worries. Instead, he becomes embroiled in a tangle of conflicting allegiances; one of his opponents, Lonnie Bruckman, a bigot and a psychotic, is terrorizing the Ojibwa reservation in ways both personal and professional: he abuses his girlfriend, Dorothy Parrish, and sells "wild cat," a methamphetamine derivative, to members of the reservation. Dorothy--desperate to escape her Ojibwa heritage but reluctantly acknowledging its force--turns up on Alex's front door with a mysterious canvas bag and a plea for shelter: "'The wolf moon means it's time to protect the people around you because there are wolves outside your door.'" But the next day, she's gone. As Alex, devastated by his inability to protect Dorothy, tries to find her, he must confront Bruckman--for whom a snowmobile is less a recreational vehicle than an instrument of torture; a mysterious Russian named Molinov; the combined forces of the local police and the DEA; and, it seems, even those he has always considered friends. Luckily for Alex, Leon Prudell, "a two-hundred-forty-pound whirlwind of flannel and snowboots," who really, really wants to be a private investigator, is right there to lend a hand. Leon adds a welcome note of comic relief to the novel (as does, to be sure, Alex's own dryly sardonic wit), but the book's tone is largely elegiac: "It was the middle of the day, but with the sun hidden behind the clouds and the weight of snow in the air, there was an oddly muted light, dim yet persistent, as each snowflake seemed to glow with its own energy. I stopped for a moment ... hypnotized by the sight of it and by the sound of my own breathing." Surviving winter takes many kinds of courage, and the reader will be enthralled by Alex's efforts to disprove Molinov's ominous warning, "'Once you freeze all the way through to your soul, you will never feel warm again. You'll see.'" Steve Hamilton won the 1999 Edgar Award for his first Alex McKnight mystery, A Cold Day in Paradise , and Winter of the Wolf Moon will reassure readers that neither beginner's luck nor sophomore jinx troubles this author. --Kelly Flynn From Publishers Weekly It's just another lovely day in Paradise... for those who love zero-degree weather and frozen pipes. This Paradise is a town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Hamilton catches up with reluctant gumshoe Alex McKnight after his debut in A Cold Day in Paradise. The frigid season finds Alex focused on snowplowing, maintaining the cabins he rents to snowmobilers and whiling away evenings at the Glasgow Inn with a few cold Canadians. After years as a cop and PI, Alex is ready to settle down to undisturbed country life. But as any good mystery writer knows (and Hamilton, who won the 1999 Edgar for Best First Novel, is no exception), that's not in the cards. One night, a young Native American, Dorothy Parrish, whose troubles are unclear but obviously serious, approaches Alex, then disappears. Her sudden disappearance has Alex presuming she's dead, and there's evidence that she was involved with ill-tempered, drug-crazed hockey player Lonnie Bruckman. Ignoring his initial trepidation to reenter the crime world, Alex vows to find Dorothy and her kidnapper--or killer. Bruckman is definitely involved, and Alex, with the help of his "partner," Leon Prudell, identifies multiple suspects. Bruckman's hockey buddies are threatening, but it soon becomes apparent that there's a more powerful force behind them. This is a most entertaining tale, peppered with wry humor and real, amusing characters. Hamilton presents a fast mystery brimming with insight into both the politics of U.S./Canadian border crimes and the relations between Native Americans and their white neighbors. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

ex-cop And Sometime-p.i. Alex Mcknight Endures The Bitter Winter Of Michigan's Upper Peninsula In His Log Cabin With Warm Fires And Cold Molsons. When Dorothy Parrish, A Young Ojibwa Woman Asks Him For Shelter From Her Violent Boyfriend, Mcknight Agrees. But After Secreting Her In One Of His Cabins, He Finds Her Gone The Next Morning. Mcknight Suspects Vicious, Hockey-playing Lonnie Bruckman Of Abducting The Woman, But His Search For Her Brings On More Suspects, Bruising Encounters, And A Thinkening Web Of Crime, All Obscured By The Relentless Whiplash Of Brutal Snowstorms. From The Secret World Of The Ojibwa Reservation To The Canadian Border And Deep Into The Silent Woods, Someone Is Out To Kill—and Mcknight Is Driving Right Into The Line Of Fire...

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after Subbing In An Amateur Ice Hockey Game For Some Indian Friends, Sometime Private Investigator Alex Mcknight Antagonizes An In-your-face Opponent Known For Racist Remarks, Drug Dealing, And Girlfriend Abuse. Alex Helps The Girlfriend, Who Promptly Disappears (along With An Important Parcel), Then Rescues Good Buddy Vinnie (an Ojibway Indian) From Jail--where He Landed After Attacking The Hockey Player. Alex, Vinnie, And A Would-be Detective/partner Search For The Woman, Sidestepping Murder, Vicious Assault, And More. The Isolated, Wintry Location Jives Well With Hamilton's Pristine Prose, Independent Protagonist, And Ingenious Plot. An Inviting Sequel To His Edgar Award-winning First Novel, A Cold Day In Paradise. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

"Alex Mcknight has a souvenir of his days as a cop - a bullet lodged too near his heart to be removed. He also has a guilty conscience about the death of his partner in that same shooting, and now he is left alone in his spartan log cabin, taking his meals at the nearby roadhouse, finding company there when he wants it - and not when he doesn't.". "But it doesn't work that way. When a young Native American woman comes to him asking for help, McKnight feels bound to protect her. He ensconces her in an unoccupied cabin that he owns - and finds her gone the following morning.". "McKnight is convinced that the woman's ex-lover, a particularly vicious member of the reservation hockey team, who McKnight outfaced in a recent game, has kidnapped her. Fearing for her life, he begins a frantic search, swatting away his self-appointed "partner" - the town's favorite fool - until the man surprises him. It's a search that leads to encounters with a variety of unsavory types, each with his own agenda, and to some extremely unpleasant discoveries by McKnight himself as he forcibly learns that criminal sadism knows no geographic boundaries and that the motives of both good and evil people can lead to disaster."--BOOK JACKET. Ex-cop and sometime P.I. Alex McKnight endures the bitter Michigan winter in his log cabin. When a young Ojibwa woman, asks for shelter from her abusive boyfriend, McKnight agrees. She disappears the next morning, and McKnight suspects her boyfriend of abducting her. But his search brings on more suspects and a thickening web of crime from the secret world of the Ojibwa reservation. Martin's Press.