[Fiction] Series Recommendation: Alex McKnight

Steve Hamilton writes his Alex McKnight character like the cold Michigan shadow of Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder.  Like Scudder, McKnight is a former cop from a big city (McKnight policed Detroit, Scudder, New York) who is retired and currently passing time as a private investigator.  McKnight is a steady and social drinker in the noir mold, but does not take to abuse like Scudder in his early novels.

McKnight has moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.)  after retirement, to the sleepy lake town of Paradise.  Sleepy little UP towns can hold dark secrets, though, and the criminal underbelly does not keep to crowded big city streets.  And corruption can be anywhere.

Alex McKnight an interesting character as a strict participant of the modern noir detective genre.  Hamilton does not try to re-write the genre with the character, but rather breathes new life into the genre by re-establishing the old stoic archetypes birthed by Dashel Hammett and later Lawrence Block.  McKnight has something that’s been missing in the genre since Scudder got sober.

Hamilton draws on Native American characters and social situations that allow for fresh dilemmas in some of the stories.  There is no Hillerman type of folk-richness with regard to the Native Americans, but rather an outsider’s view of attempting to work with an at times inclusive community.  The plots are usually on the darker side and feature bleakness and atypical triumph as typical in the noir genre.  Some of the other character interactions and relationships feel so real that it’s like something you know that happened to a guy once but then realize that it’s just in the book.

The length of the novels even flash back to a time when detective writing was supposed to be brief and brutal.  Hamilton does not produce 400-500 page books full of forced relationships and other filler that have ran roughshod over the modern form of the genre, but his books end in the early 300s and read fast while maintaining their depth and action.

The sum of the parts make for a thrilling series of sharp turns and brutality that say fresh with each entry.

Alex McKnight Series

• A Cold Day in Paradise (1998)
• Winter of the Wolf Moon (2000)
• The Hunting Wind
• North of Nowhere
• Blood is the Sky
• Ice Run
• A Stolen Season (2006)

—————-
Now playing on Amarok: The Beatles – Think for Yourself

Similar Posts:

• [Book Review] Dexter is Delicious (2010)
• Summer Reading: “61 Hours” by Lee Child
• [TV Trailer] Game of Thrones (HBO)
• Books You Really Should Have Read By Now — “Paper Lion”
• Sword and Sorcery and Stuff: Fantasy Series Passing Muster or Just Rank
• Books You Really Should Have Read By Now — “Microserfs”
• [Book Review] ‘Against a Dark Background’ by Iain M. Banks

Popularity: 1% [?]