{"id":597,"date":"2012-06-26T20:41:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T02:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=597"},"modified":"2012-06-26T20:41:03","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T02:41:03","slug":"steve-hamilton-die-a-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/steve-hamilton-die-a-stranger\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Hamilton: Die a Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Steve Hamilton keeps getting better and better, and in this latest Alex McKnight novel he seems to have hit a fast paced groove.\u00a0 This book is so spare and so elegantly assembled it seems effortless.\u00a0 The dialogue snaps and crackles, the action doesn\u2019t let up, and underneath it all is the drumbeat of Alex\u2019s heart as he searches for his friend, Vinnie.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Vinnie, as readers of this series will know, is Alex\u2019s nearest neighbor, an Ojibwe who has moved off the reservation to be on his own.\u00a0 His family is a bit puzzled by this behavior but things are in a state of uneasy truce, though Vinnie\u2019s sisters aren\u2019t big Alex fans.<\/p>\n

The book begins with the funeral of Vinnie\u2019s mother, a lynch pin of the Ojibwe community.\u00a0 She had raised Vinnie and his siblings single handed.\u00a0 After the funeral Vinnie disappears, but Alex becomes concerned pretty quickly, knowing Vinnie\u2019s routines and behaviors well.<\/p>\n

The other incident that jump starts the book is a drug deal on a tiny Michigan airstrip which has left several people dead.\u00a0 The two events \u2013 Vinnie\u2019s disappearance and the fatal drug deal – seem unrelated, but when a slacker cousin of Vinnie\u2019s turns up missing Alex knows the two events are tied together.<\/p>\n

While Hamilton hasn\u2019t structured his books exactly like a traditional private eye series \u2013 i.e., the\u00a0 private eye has a lethal, if cool, sidekick \u2013 in each book there\u2019s still a partner of one kind or another.\u00a0 In some books, it\u2019s been Vinnie; in some, the wanna be P.I., Leon, and in the last book, Alex\u2019s frenemy from the Soo, Chief Maven.\u00a0 In this novel his partner turns out to be Vinnie\u2019s long lost father, recently released from prison.\u00a0 Whether Alex likes it or not, Lou is on the hunt with him all over Michigan to find the missing men.<\/p>\n

The way the story is told \u2013 and it\u2019s a dark one, full of violence and the underlying issues that separated Lou from his family for so many years \u2013 is completely unsentimental.\u00a0 Yet in his way Hamilton cuts to the heart of things as surely as any writer of psychological suspense, he just gets there differently.\u00a0 The emotional punch is still a strong one.<\/p>\n

The fragile and frequently hostile ties Lou has to his former community and family are never emphasized but at the same time they are what underlies his frantic search for his son.\u00a0 While Alex thinks like the former cop that he is, Lou thinks like the ex-con that he is, and their two ways of thinking somehow complement each other.<\/p>\n

This book has enough twists, emotional and otherwise, for me not to want to give away too much other than to say this is a powerful, and powerfully told, story by a writer who is at the peak of his narrative powers.\u00a0 At this point in his career Steve Hamilton hardly needs my rave review, but it\u2019s been such a pleasure to watch his career grow and to see his books accelerate and get better and better that I can\u2019t help myself.\u00a0 In every way, this is an exciting ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Hamilton keeps getting better and better, and in this latest Alex McKnight novel he seems to have hit a fast paced groove.\u00a0 This book is so spare and so elegantly assembled it seems effortless.\u00a0 The dialogue snaps and crackles, the action doesn\u2019t let up, and underneath it all is the drumbeat of Alex\u2019s heart … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,7],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-michigan","tag-p-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}