Blood is the Sky by Steve Hamilton- Tom Leblanc a young man out on parole trying to get his life back in order.Life and money is hard to come by on the Rez unless you work the casinos but Tom cannot obtain work there as he is a felon.Vinnie Leblanc, Tom's brother who himself has tried to get his life in order. Vinnie deals blackjack at the local casino but is the blacksheep of the family. Vinnie lives off the Rez though at times you would never know it.Vinnie has an offer to guide a hunting party in Canada, he does not want it and the Canadians frown on outsiders coming to their territory to do guide trips.Vinnie agrees to let Tom be him, giving him his wallet and I.D.. He Has to aid his brother in anyway he can and make sure he stays straight.Alex McKnight former Detroit Policeman and sometimes private eye.Alex is still recovering from the loss of his partner, his divorce and a bullet lodged near his heart.He is rebuilding one of his cabins destroyed by fire.It is late to be building a cabin but he is determined to try.Vinnie offers to give Alex a hand, though friends their friendship has been strained and perhaps this is a way to let the past go.Tom and the hunting party are overdue. No one has heard from them and they cannot be reached by phone.Vinnie feeling responsible for Tom is heading to Canada to try and find out what is going on. Alex has few friends, and he holds dearly to the ones he has and the obligations and duties of friendship.He can't let Vinnie go alone. The two head up to a very lonely spot in the Canadian wilderness.What they find leaves them with many questions and as they hunt for the answers to the groups where about they too may just become the hunted.Steve Hamilton is an excellent author with very believable characters. He paints a clear and telling view of the surrounding environment and the characters themselves. He also gives a glimpse inside the Rez and the feeling towards outsiders but their devotion to friends and upper most to family.I look forward to many more exciting reads from Hamilton in the future.
Steve Hamilton writes clean, full-blooded stories. It's impressive how he packs so much of an experience into relatively few words. I admit it had been a bit since I'd read the last Alex McKnight and I'd forgotten how much I like Hamilton's style. Light prose that packs a great punch. Blood is the Sky is more of the same. I mean this is only a good way--I don't know if I've read a book of this length (barely over three hundred pages for the mass market paperback) that left me feeling as if I'd been on such a long journey through the wringer. So much distance is covered here (and not just in fictional geography), yet it doesn't feel rushed. It's told in a measured enough pace that you can enjoy every bit of it. McKnight, Hamilton's unconventional on-again, off-again PI, is still an evolving character five books in. His world is small and familiar, but it's interesting to see both his adaptation to it and his resistance to fade away into a tiny corner of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Blood takes place in a broad geographical setting, and Hamilton captures the atmosphere in an impressive way, somehow never bogging the story down with descriptive nonsense. It's nice to be reminded how much you like a particular thing. Steve Hamilton did that for me with Blood is the Sky. I like these characters, I like this series, and most of all, I like the way he writes. Recommended for all thriller/mystery fans. Especially those who can appreciate a rich story told with masterful economy.
I put this series in the category of "television substitutes," and the books are all thoroughly enjoyable examples of that category. The main character, Alex McKnight; is a former minor league baseball player, a former Detroit cop (who took three bullets during the shooting that killed his partner); and an uninterested, but licensed, private investigator. He considers himself a failure at all three. He lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he ends up sticking his nose into problems that, inevitably, result in personal injury. While the main character gets beaten up far more than is realistic, he, and the other characters, are quirky and enjoyable to follow.My only regret is that I've exhausted the entire series in just about a week.
—Brian Clapper
This is my third novel by Steve Hamilton, and the second in the Alex McKnight series. Steve Hamilton is a great writer, I really enjoy his style. This one is set deep in the Canadian wilderness, with a focus on the relationship between Alex and his good friend and neighbor Vinnie. They take a break from rebuilding Alex's cabin to go find out what has happened to Vinnie's brother, who has gone missing up in the Canadian wilderness. A convicted felon on parole, Vinnie's brother Tom has assumed Vinnie's identity in order to enter Canada to act as a guide on a moose hunt for some men up from Detroit. Hamilton is able to capture and show the culture and lifestyle of the Ojibwa Tribe in this series of novels. In a market that has become quite crowded with series private eye characters, the Alex McNight series stands out.
—Jerry
What are friends for? Well, Alex McKnight demonstrates just that in this novel which takes him and his erstwhile friend, Vinnie Le Blanc, on a stormy adventure way up in the wilds of northern Canada. It starts when Vinnie, with whom Alex has been at odds since an event in the previous novel in the series, asks Alex to help him find his brother, who is days overdue returning home after accompanying a hunting party as their scout at a Canadian lodge.To complicate matters, Vinnie’s brother Tom is on parole and is forbidden to leave the country. So he and Vinnie trade identities. Alex and his friend drive for hours until they reach the lodge, and there is no sign of Tom or the hunting party. But something seems “off,” and they begin to scout the area where the group was housed at a lake further north. And thereby hangs a gruesome tale.The author, known for his vivid descriptions of the Upper Michigan peninsula, shows an equal facility for the vast untamed wilderness of northern Canada. He has written a taut tale filled with danger and violence. And at the end, lays the seeds of Alex’s further adventures yet to come. Recommended.
—Gloria Feit
