Book Reviews of A Cold Day In Paradise (Alex McKnight, Bk 1)

WOW ! Got this cause the reviews were so good. They did not lie ! A really great first novel. If you like the genre this is the advent of a new talent right up there with Parker and Patterson. Just put his others on my list and cannot wait to reaqd them.

I have found a great new author in Steve Hamilton - this is the 5th book of his that I have read and I love them all. His repeat of the character Alex McNight and the area in the upper peninsula where his character lives creates such a great backdrop for his stories. I would highly suggest his books for reading!

Very good Book! Hated for it to end.

Enjoyed!!! Looking forward to reading another book by this author.

This is the first in the Alex McKnight series. He's an ex-cop who unwillingly becomes a private investigator. The story line is good and keeps you interested.

great detective mystery!, the first of a series.

Excellent detective story. Great book!

Hamilton won both the Edgar and Shamus awards for best first novel, and it's easy to see why. This is a classic private eye novel set in an unlikely location. Alex McKnight is part Lucas Davenport, part Matthew Scudder. The story flows smoothly, all the action, dialogue, descriptions, everything that needs to be there is there. It's 271 pages of pure private eye mystery, nothing extra to fluff up the book to 400 pages. Perfect as it stands. I'm going to read more from Hamilton. Hopefully it's this good.

Steve Hamilton at his best. If you love the UP of Michigan, this is a must read.

I really liked this book

Very good first novel, set in Michigan's upper peninsula.

A must for all PI and susprnce fans.

Yes, Alex McKnight was an athlete in his youth--but a minor league baseball player, not a top pro forced out by injury. And yes, he was a cop in Detroit before he moved up to the town of Paradise on the shores of Lake Superior--but even this overused genre icon is made believable by the details of a particularly bloody shootout. In Paradise, Alex runs a hunting camp built by his late father and only drifts into private investigations because of two friends, a persuasive lawyer and a local millionaire with a gambling problem who needs his help. When two bookmakers are murdered and the millionaire disappears, all the signs point to the psychopath who killed McKnight's partner and left a slug near Alex's heart 14 years before.

mystery ..good plot ...characters and atmosphere very real..enjoyed

First in a great series that takes place in the C-O-L-D of Michigan's Upper Penninsula. Alex McKnight is a former Detroit police office, recouperating in the North Woods from injuries acquired in a shoot-out that left his partner dead.

Really Good keeps you turnng pages

Other than the bullet lodged less that a centimeter form his heart, former Detroit police officer Alex McKnight thought he had put the nightmare of his partner's death and his own near fatal injury behind him. After all, Maximilian Rose, convicted of the crimes, has been locked in the state pen for years. But in the small town of Paradise,Michigan, where McKnight has traded his badge for a cozy cabin in the woods, a murderer with Rose's unmistakeable tradmarks appears to be back to his killing ways. With Rose locked away, McKnight can't understand who else would know the intimate details of the old murders-not to mention the signature blood-red rose left on his doorstep. And it seem like it will be a frozen day in Hell before McKnight can unravel the cold truth from a deadly deception in a town that's anything but Paradise.

Although I haven't read this book, it did win an Edgar Award for best first mystery/thriller novel by an American author in 1999.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
The bullet has been lodged next to Alex McKnight's heart for fourteen years now, the police officer who was his partner is fourteen years dead, and the borderline psycho named Rose, who shot them both, has been shut up in the state penitentiary since he was caught a year later. So how is it that in a small town named Paradise, on the shore of Lake Superior on Michigan's Northern Peninsula, the man named Rose seems to be stalking Alex McKnight? There is no doubt that Rose is still in prison - he has neither seen nor spoken to anyone on the "outside" in all these years. But McKnight, returning to his cabin in the woods late one night, finds a rose - the killer's calling card - in the snow at his doorstep. He'd been called out earlier by Edwin Fulton, a wealthy acquaintance and a compulsive gambler, who unilaterally thinks of McKnight as his "best friend." Fulton had gone to a local motel to pay off a bookmaker and found the man murdered with his throat cut. In his panic, he called ex-cop McKnight to extricate him. The bookmaker's murder is only the first of what becomes a series of killings, and Fulton's domineering and semihysterical mother engages McKnight, now a private detective, to ensure her son's safety. McKnight accepts the job reluctantly, knowing he will suffer the recriminations of Fulton's beautiful, dissatisfied wife, with whom he had a brief liaison. And all the while, there are the constant reminders that, impossible as it seems, somewhere nearby is Rose - his namesake flower at McKnight's door, his ghostly phone calls, his insane letters that remind the ex-cop of things done and words said that only McKnight and the killer could know. It's a double mystery that plagues Alex McKnight - how could Rose be in Paradise, and what is he planning to do to Alex?

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