BLOOD IS THE SKY

The fifth novel featuring former Detroit cop Alex McKnight overflows with an element lacking from too many mysteries: a genuine sense of mystery. Now living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Alex treks into the Canadian woods with Native American pal Vinnie ‘Red Sky’ LeBlanc in search of Vinnie’s missing brother. Blood boldly crosses genre boundaries as it turns into a thrilling outdoor adventure, then a heartfelt small-town tragedy. All along, Hamilton’s prose–he describes a police sergeant’s face ‘that could register ten levels of irritation, and today it looked like he had turned it up to seven or eight’–remains an unself-consciously terse pleasure.