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Blood is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Steve Hamilton (Author) "I saw a lot of fires when I was a cop in Detroit ..." (more)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition edition (May 27 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312991509
ISBN-13: 978-0312991500
Product Dimensions: 16.5 x 10.2 x 2.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 205 g

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #383,830 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

One of the most promising secondary figures in Steve Hamilton's series about reluctant northern Michigan PI Alex McKnight has always been his teetotaling Ojibwa Indian pal, Vinnie LeBlanc. But Vinnie remained mostly to himself through the first four McKnight adventures. Blood Is the Sky finally lets him loose, and it's both a pleasure and painful to see what results.

Vinnie's younger, ex-con brother, Tom, has disappeared. In violation of his parole, Tom had guided a small contingent of moose hunters into the pacific forests of Ontario, but none of them had returned home on schedule. To assuage Vinnie's worries, McKnight agrees to drive with him into Canada and look for the men. No luck; the owners of a money-losing lakeside lodge where those sportsmen had stayed say they departed days ago. So where did they go? Who were the two other, unidentified guys who came looking for them in advance of McKnight and his friend? And why was the hunters' vehicle abandoned, with their wallets inside, near an Indian reservation? Looking for answers, the detective and Vinnie set off into the woods, where hungry bears are by no means the most dangerous creatures they'll have to face.

Despite its Deliverance-like moments, and an explosively violent conclusion that's not sufficiently foreshadowed, Blood Is the Sky is really a gracefully composed study of character, as focused on Vinnie's strengths and failings as Hamilton's previous novel, North of Nowhere, was on the backstory of another series regular, bar owner Jackie Connery. Yet McKnight shines here, too, his self-effacing humor keeping readers amused, when they aren't amazed--again--by the lengths to which this supposedly lonerish sleuth will go to help a friend in trouble. --J. Kingston Pierce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar winner Hamilton's engrossing novel of revenge, the fifth in his Alex McKnight series (after 2002's North of Nowhere), alternates between well-paced action fraught with danger and Alex's slow, meticulous inquiries. A former Detroit cop sidelined by a bullet, Alex is living quietly in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula when he agrees to help an Ojibway friend, Vinnie Red Sky LeBlanc. Vinnie's searching for his black sheep brother, Tom, who hasn't returned from a job guiding a hunting party of wealthy Detroit men in the Canadian wilderness. The staff of an isolated lodge on an island-dotted lake arouses Alex and Vinnie's suspicions with their unsatisfactory explanations about the hunting party's trip. Then the anxious wives report their husbands are missing to the Ontario Provincial Police, leading Alex and Vinnie deeper into an investigation that eventually points to a crime in Detroit in 1985. The fate of Tom's hunting party becomes apparent early on, as the reader gets drawn into a complex series of inexplicable, and highly improbable, coincidences. Nonetheless, Hamilton develops his plot carefully. A fine writer, he excels at describing the lonely locale as well as depicting such memorable characters as tough-minded cop Natalie Reynaud and Maskwa, a 70-year-old Cree still flying his clapped-out plane around the Canadian skies.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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First Sentence
I saw a lot of fires when I was a cop in Detroit. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars His Novels Get Better and Better!, Jun 13 2004

By	Mr. R. H. Thompson "miamimysteryreader" (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (Hardcover)

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

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5.0 out of 5 stars A-1, Feb 11 2004

By	bill runyon (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (Hardcover)

This is the best mystery written yet by Steve Hamilton, and his
writing skills have to be experienced to be believed.
If a reader can read his description of being lost in the north
of Canada, while alone, and not feel some of the nervousinous
of being lost themselves, then such reader must not be concentrating on the exposition.
Here, hero Alex McKnight, a semi-retired Detroit cop who has sought the refuge of a lonely existence up in the U.P., is drawn into helping his equally-reclusive neighbor, Vinnie, a member of the local Ojibwa tribe. Vinnie's brother hasn't returned from guiding a hunting party into the wilds of Ontario,
and the family is worried. Vinnie especially so because he has
loaned his ID to the brother because his brother is a convicted
felon and would get into serious trouble for leaving Michigan
to go into Canada.
Vinnie finally explains to Alex why he did such a stupid thing,
but that only encourages Alex to "sign up" and agree to help
Vinnie look for the missing group.
So off they go, driving along the shore of Lake Superior, into
the northern wilds of Ontario, and they keep driving until they
run out of road and have to go off-road to a desolate lake, where they meet a group in the process of closing up their lodge. All hunters have already left, and the lodge staff is getting ready to return home for the winter, perhaps for good.
Alex and Vinnie have to explore further, and they run into Detroit mobsters, unhelpful Indians, a couple of bar brawlers,
as well as an unlikely team of Ontario Provincial Police constables.
Hamilton's descriptions of the drive along Lake Superior, the
isolated hunting lodge, the encounters with moose and black bear, the enforced overnight stay in the town of Wawa (where Alex remarks that Wawa is not the kind of town a guy would want to spend a vacation in), is so on-the-mark, a perceptive reader
will feel the cold, damp wind in his face and hear the un-Godly
growls of large carnivores in the dark of the night as he follows McKnight in his search for the truth.
Author Hamilton's powers of description show such intimacy with
the features and characteristics of the places and lives in desolate areas of N. Ontario, he has to have experienced them.
And even at that, only the best writer could convey a reader to those same places and same feelings.
Those isolated places of the North are examples of a different
level of civilization from what most of us experience, and for the reader willing to live that life, even briefly, this book is
a must.
Plus, after years of living alone with his thoughts and worries
in Paradise, Michigan, he meets an eye-catching OPP Constable he wishes he could have met under better circumstances, and Alex can't quite get her out of his mind. Even as his legal
situation deteriorates, and he and Vinnie end up in a holding cell at the OPP detachment in Hearst, Ontario, Alex keeps wondering just what kind of woman the distant Constable is.
And Alex even gets another unexpected benefit when Vinnie's mother "adopts" him into her Ojibwa family, as Alex tries his
hardest to understand and explain what happened to Vinnie's brother in the northern wilds.
Hamilton is also so good at his descriptions of his subjects' feelings, and his powers of observation, many readers will get
tired during all of Alex's numerous trips up and down the highway,
to such places as Detroit, Sault St.Marie, Wawa, Hearst,
Sudbury, Timmons, and more, because we feel like we are riding
along with him, fighting fatigue and pain with nothing but coffee and the knowledge that time is running against us.
Join the ride and fight and go along with Alex McKnight on this
new exciting and dangerous adventure.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling On More Than One Level, Jan 3 2004

By	Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (Hardcover)

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.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong Blood Ties
Alex McKnight travels to the woods of north Ontario with Ojibway friend Vinnie LeBlanc in a search for Vinnie's brother, Tom, hired as a guide for five Detroit gangsters, all of... Read more

Published on Dec 7 2003 by Tim Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
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. Read more

Published on Oct 13 2003 by dfchen

5.0 out of 5 stars Test of Friendship
BLOOD IS THE SKY is really divided into thirds. The story begins with Alex McKnight rebuilding a cabin his father built in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Read more

Published on Aug 24 2003 by A. Christie

5.0 out of 5 stars Blood is the Sky
Steve Hamilton, does it again. I have read all of his books and by far found this to be the best.

Alex sets out with Vinnie to help him find his brother Tom, who is long... Read more