Blood is Sky - Hardcover

Hamilton, Steve

4.14

4,024 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752852760 ISBN 13: 9780752852768

Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2003

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It is October in Paradise, Michigan, and Alex McKnight is rebuilding one of his cabins with help from Vinnie LeBlanc, his Ojibwa neighbour. They're interrupted when Vinnie is called away to deal with a family emergency - his brother, Tom, has not returned from a hunting trip to Canada. He is already four days overdue. Alex and Vinnie decide to retrace the steps of the hunting party, driving all the way up as far as the roads will go in northern Ontario. When they arrive at the lodge, they are told that the men had already been flown back from the outpost, and had promptly left to return to Michigan. But something is not right. Aided by a young Cree Indian and his grandfather, they fly to the remote outpost. Left alone there, they discover a terrible secret. Now Alex and Vinnie are miles away from civilization, with no food and no weapons. And there's someone out there who definitely does not want them to make it back alive.

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Review:

One of the most promising secondary figures in Steve Hamilton's series about reluctant northern Michigan PI Alex McKnight has always been his teetotaling Ojibwa Indian pal, Vinnie LeBlanc. But Vinnie remained mostly to himself through the first four McKnight adventures. Blood Is the Sky finally lets him loose, and it's both a pleasure and painful to see what results.

Vinnie's younger, ex-con brother, Tom, has disappeared. In violation of his parole, Tom had guided a small contingent of moose hunters into the pacific forests of Ontario, but none of them had returned home on schedule. To assuage Vinnie's worries, McKnight agrees to drive with him into Canada and look for the men. No luck; the owners of a money-losing lakeside lodge where those sportsmen had stayed say they departed days ago. So where did they go? Who were the two other, unidentified guys who came looking for them in advance of McKnight and his friend? And why was the hunters' vehicle abandoned, with their wallets inside, near an Indian reservation? Looking for answers, the detective and Vinnie set off into the woods, where hungry bears are by no means the most dangerous creatures they'll have to face.

Despite its Deliverance-like moments, and an explosively violent conclusion that's not sufficiently foreshadowed, Blood Is the Sky is really a gracefully composed study of character, as focused on Vinnie's strengths and failings as Hamilton's previous novel, North of Nowhere, was on the backstory of another series regular, bar owner Jackie Connery. Yet McKnight shines here, too, his self-effacing humor keeping readers amused, when they aren't amazed--again--by the lengths to which this supposedly lonerish sleuth will go to help a friend in trouble. --J. Kingston Pierce

From the Back Cover:

"The best mysteries are about the past coming up out of the ground and grabbing the present by the throat. Steve Hamilton knows this. "Blood is the Sky" fills that bill and then some. This is his best yet." -Michael Connelly, author of "Chasing the Dime"
"Winning the Edgar Award for "A Cold Day in Paradise," Steve Hamilton introduced one of the most compelling characters in modern fiction: Alex McKnight, a gritty ex-Detroit cop who can't say no to a friend in need-no matter the cost. Now McKnight finds himself in the forests of northern Ontario, a land of savage beauty and sudden danger, where some secrets just won't stay buried."
Alex McKnight isn't a man with many friends, but the few he has know they're never alone in a fix. So when Vinnie LeBlanc asks for his help in taking a trip deep into Canada in search of his missing brother, the Ojibwa Indian knows he can count on Alex. Tom LeBlanc had taken a job as hunting guide for a rough crew of Detroit "businessmen." The group was due back days ago, yet there's been no sign of them, and there's mounting evidence of something odd about their disappearing act. The trackless forests of northern Ontario keep many secrets, but none more shocking than the one that Alex is about to uncover. And the more closely Alex looks for answers, the more the questions become: where are the hunters...and who is the prey?
"Overflows with an element lacking from too many mysteries: a genuine sense of mystery..."Blood "boldly crosses genre boundaries as it turns into a thrilling outdoor adventure, then a heartfelt small town tragedy. All along, Hamilton's prose...remains an unselfconsciously terse pleasure." -"Entertainment Weekly"

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