A review by kiwi_fruit
Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel by Steve Hamilton

3.0

[b:The Lock Artist|6811221|The Lock Artist|Steve Hamilton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442590100l/6811221._SY75_.jpg|7018945] was my first introduction to Steve Hamilton. I enjoyed that book, so I decided to try one of his popular Alex McKnight mysteries. This novel starts with an unexplained suicide of a young man on the shores of an isolated lake, soon followed by the murder of the suicide victim’s father, an ex cop.

Alex is a retired Detroit police officer living in an isolated snowed-under place in the Upper Peninsula, he is recovering from physical and psychological scars (presumably from earlier cases), spending his time renovating cabins and driving a snow plow. Chief Maven, an old acquaintance but no friend of Alex, asks him to investigate this is pattern of deaths (son/daughter-police officer father) that is rapidly escalating. How are these killings linked to each other and who is behind?

It wasn’t too hard to jump right into this series despite the novel being #8 in the sequence. The MC was a flawed but likable character and nicely drawn, the suspenseful story was perhaps more convoluted that it ought to be

Spoiler

(why involve the mobster? Page filler?)

but it had a nice pace, it seems to me that the author prefers a “cinematic” style of narration, the novel would make a decent movie script

Spoiler

(with a somewhat predictable ending)

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I wasn’t blown away but I liked this book and will probably go back to the start and try the first novel in this series.