Pun Salad

I have a number of unread books on the shelf by Steve Hamilton, but (for some obscure reason) they got pushed way down on the to-be-read list. In fact, the last Hamiltonian book I read was way back in 2004, pre-blog.

Fortunately, after a year and a half of retirement, I'm starting to whittle away at the unread pile. And so here's North of Nowhere (2002), the fourth book in Hamilton's series with protagonist Alex McKnight. Alex is an ex-baseball player, an ex-cop, and in this book he's also an ex-private eye, having been disillusioned with the profession in the previous book. (No, I don't remember the details. It was 2004, for Pete's sake!)

Alex is OK with simply running his small rustic cabin-rental business in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. But he is dragooned into attending a poker party at the manse of a local tycoon. Which is rudely interrupted by a trio of gun-wielding thugs, demanding that the tycoon give up some of his ill-gotten riches.

Fine, this is no skin off Alex's nose, right? The tycoon is a major jerk. But things are not what they seem! Were any of the poker players actually in on the heist? Unsurprisingly, Alex is forced to get back into the investigatory game.

A not bad caper, although Hamilton does tend to hammer away at the unspoiled beauty of the UP and Lake Superior for more words than absolutely necessary.