NORTH OF NOWHERE by Steve Hamilton May 2002 0-312-26897-1 Thomas Dunne for St. Martin’s Minotaur

NORTH OF NOWHERE is Steve Hamilton’s fourth mystery featuring Alex McKnight. Justifiably clad in most of the awards Mystery has to offer with the first in the series A COLD DAY IN PARADISE Mr. Hamilton has followed it up with two equally compelling reads. This brings us to NORTH OF NOWHERE. As the story opens Alex is in a grand funk. Contemplating his fiftieth year and holed up in his Michigan cabin reading True Crime Novels for comfort Alex doesn’t even realize how pitiful he is. Good friend Jackie knows Alex is down and out and when an player drops out of the weekly poker game he coerces Alex into making a sixth man. With a poker game that soon goes more wrong than any game since Wild Bill’s aces over eights hand so long ago we’re off and Alex is pulled back into the land of the living. Who held up the poker game? How much money was in that safe? Will former partner Leon come through? And why would anyone name a dog Miata? Visiting appearances by kitchen manufacturer Winston Vargas, Canadian goons and a man by the name of Isabella are interwoven by the return of series regulars Jackie, Leon and Chief Maven with a grace of pen that leaves you wondering if Hamilton is better with characters, setting or plot. In a series set in Michigan’s U.P. Mr. Hamilton continues to deliver a mystery so tightly drawn and well executed that those big city slickers better watch out. Noir isn’t just for population centers over 200 anymore.

Ruth Jordan