Book Review: A Stolen Season

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

A Stolen Season     Amazon US HC Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada HC
Steve Hamilton
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Private Investigator   Police Procedural
Series: Alex McKnight # 7
Thomas Dunne Books, $29.95 hardcover, 290 pages

It’s the Fourth of July, but it feels more like the fourth of November when Alex McKnight and some of his friends fish three men out of Waishkey Bay. The men have run an antique Cris-Craft powerboat into a row of old dock pilings in the fog. Alex gets a bad feeling about these guys, even more so when two of them show up the next day looking for a locked box they say was in the boat. The men are not about to take no for an answer, and Alex soon finds himself in some deep trouble.

Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Ontario Provincial Police officer Natalie Reynaud, has been recruited for an undercover investigation by the RCMP. Alex can’t help but worry about her when she’s 500 miles away in Toronto, setting up meetings with gunrunners, but it’s when she’s closest to him that disaster strikes. Now Alex is hell-bent on getting to the bottom of things.

I find Steve Hamilton a workmanlike writer, and Alex McKnight a workmanlike character. A Stolen Season did nothing for me except confirm those beliefs. I didn’t particularly enjoy Hamilton trotting out the old chestnut of a plot device that he employs to inject some angst into his protagonist’s character. (I can’t say more without giving the device away and thus spoiling the plot.) Suffice it to say that the tortured hero is alive and well (or, rather, in agony) in the American private investigator novel.

The pacing is good, however; Hamilton carries the reader along as if in a fast-moving current. Even if you know what’s coming down the pipeline, you can’t really put the book down.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM