Book Review: Blood Is the Sky

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Blood Is the Sky     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Steve Hamilton
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Private Investigator   Police Procedural
Series: Alex McKnight # 5

This is a very nice series. Hamilton's setting is the cold, remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near the shore of Lake Superior. Alex McKnight was a cop in Detroit before a shootout in which his partner died and he was wounded. He has moved back to his boyhood home in the UP, and works hard at leaving the turmoil and guilt of his earlier years behind him.

In this entry, McKnight strives to help a friend. Vinnie LeBlanc doesn't know what has happened to his brother Tom. After leaving to work as a hunting guide for a group of Detroit residents, Tom has failed to return or get in touch with his family. Vinnie feels responsible, and together he and Alex leave to inquire at the hunting lodge where the party was to have stayed.

What should have been a routine trip to verify Tom's whereabouts becomes deadly. In the course of events, Alex and Vinnie find themselves alone in the Canadian autumnal wilderness, with unforgiving Mother Nature as one of their opponents, together with an unseen group bent on murder.

The book is a thoughtful study of familial responsibility, friendship, revenge, unassuaged grief, the traditions of the Cree and Ojibwa nations, as well as an unfolding picture of Alex gradually returning to satisfactory human relationships, after years of holding himself apart.

Woodstock - RAM

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