A Cold Day in Paradise

Alex McKnight was a cop in Detroit, but that ended 14 years earlier when he was shot three times by a madman called Rose. Rose also killed McKnight’s partner, and he left McKnight with a bullet lodged to near his heart and spine for safe removal. After his recovery, he moved to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan where his father had built some hunting lodges that McKnight had inherited and was now renting out. Recently McKnight got talked into getting his license to be a private investigator. This is the first in an 11-book series, several of which have already been reviewed in the blog.

This 1998 book, A Cold Day in Paradise, introduces the reader to McKnight and the cast of characters that will be developed in the course of Hamilton’s novels. Roy Maven is the highly irritable and troublesome Chief of Police, Leon Prudell is an investigator who has been displaced by McKnight, and Jackie is the owner of the Glasgow Inn which is central to life in McKnight’s Paradise, Michigan.

In this story, two bookies are grotesquely murdered, and clues are left that tie their deaths to the man who shot McKnight. But Rose is still in maximum security at the Jackson State Prison, so how could he have done this? Ultimately, I found the story to be absurd. As much as I like Hamilton’s characters, this is not the best of his books. I would put this series about McKnight in my category of “airplane books,” something to distract you on a cross-country flight, but which not keep you awake if you needed to grab a nap. Still, I keep getting drawn back to Hamilton, so have a look.