Fictional sleuth Alex McKnight is back and his fans are pleased, but no more so than his creator, Michigan-born author Steve Hamilton.
Returning in his eighth novel, McKnight ventures west from his home base in Paradise, to ominously named Misery Bay, where he is asked to investigate the suicide of a college student, a young man who appeared to have it all, but who instead hangs himself from a large, lonely tree near the shores of Lake Superior.
After a five year hiatus that saw Hamilton publish a second stand-alone novel “The Lock Artist,” Hamilton decided McKnight’s return should have the reluctant hero veer west. “I knew he had never gone west in the U.P.,” Hamilton says. “I knew it was very different out that way; I knew he’d have to wander out that way some time and get in trouble.”
Hamilton knew the only way he could have McKnight find the mystery of the western U.P. was to travel there himself, so he drove the Seney Stretch along M-28, eventually landing in the tiny town of Toivola. When he saw the nearby sign for Misery Bay, Hamilton knew he had found the right spot. “It’s not even on the map, unless you have a really good map,” he says of the bay.
Absorbed in an environment he describes as “forlorn and forgotten, he began to imagine the details of his new project. “ Like any crime writer, I asked myself what’s the worst thing that could happen here,” before fixing on the new book’s entry point, the suicide of a promising young man. He says the location is perfect for Alex’s next adventure, “Because it’s such a lonely place and there’s this big tree overlooking the lake.” The tree figures prominently in the story.
As he has for all his Alex McKnight novels, Hamilton resurrects some other colorful characters, chief among them Jackie Connery, owner of the familiar Glasgow Inn in Paradise, the spot McKnight is likely to be sipping on a cold Molson while waiting for something to happen. Jackie is as taciturn as ever, opening the story by telling some unsuspecting snowmobiler in a pink suit to leave and never come back when the man tramples on the local affinity for Lake Superior.
The first major twist in the story comes when Roy Maven, another recurring character and chief of police in Sault Ste. Marie, calls on McKnight with the hope of enlisting the sleuth’s help. Turns out the dead boy’s father is an old colleague of Maven’s. “Theoretically they’ve always been on the same side, even though they knock heads sometimes, Hamilton says of the tension in the relationship between Maven and McKnight.
As the boy’s father struggles to make sense of the suicide, he turns to his old buddy Maven. “It’s like the ultimate heart-breaking mystery,” Hamilton says of the weight of the suicide. Of the questions surrounding what drove the young man to suicide, Hamilton believes, “It’s almost an impossible question to answer,” which necessarily becomes the novel’s purpose.
Enlisted because he might be more likely to get the boy’s college pals to open up, McKnight reluctantly, as always, agrees to give it a shot, expecting to find little useful information, eventually uncovering more than enough to unravel the details that resolve the case.
Hamilton believes Alex McKnight has evolved since the first novel in the series, the Edgar Award winning “A Cold Day In Paradise,” published in 2000. “He still blames himself for what happened,” Hamilton says, referring to the shooting death of his partner when McKnight was a Detroit police officer, a shooting that occurred 14 years earlier. “When you first meet him, it’s been a few years since all this stuff happened in Detroit and he’s hoping not to deal with it.”
Dealing with it is a major current in the novels. McKnight has moved north to forget, but he can’t. Surrounded by his past, both personal and professional, the retired cop finds he’s constantly being called upon by new friends to help.
Though Alex McKnight took a hiatus, Hamilton did not. Still working his day job at IBM, he also managed to keep writing, turning out stand-alone mysteries in “Night Work,” and “The Lock Artist,” both well received by critics and readers alike. “It’s strange to think of a fictional character as needing a break,” he says of McKnight, “but he really did.”
Hamilton also wanted to take a break from his fictional creation. “I never want it to get easy. You can tell when someone hasn’t burned a lot of calories on a middle book,” he continues, explaining he didn’t want readers to think of him this way.
He believes the experience of the stand-alone books has been helpful. “I hope I became a much better writer having gone through it.” He feels the break from the series was necessary. “That was all I knew, and I sort of had this idea ‘that you need a break or you’d be stuck.’”
Having returned to the series, Hamilton has plans for even more. “I can’t imagine ever not wanting to go back to Alex,” he says. “I’m working on the next book, and it’s Alex. I’m sure I’ll stay with him for the next two.”
About his absence from Michigan, Hamilton says the space is helpful to his writing about home. “If you’re in the minute details every day and you get to look back, you might miss something.” From the distance of his New York home, he believes, “I can look back and know what Michigan is. Without hesitation, Hamilton says, “I know for a fact I couldn’t have written these books if I hadn’t moved away and had a chance to look back.”
Steve Hamilton will be back in Michigan beginning July 12 with a stop in Montague. He will conclude his tour with a visit to the Mackinac Island Public Library on August 26. He will sign books in Traverse City at Horizon books on Tuesday, July 19 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.
For more details about his books and his book tour, visit authorstevehamilton.com
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