Pun Salad

This 2003 book is number 5 in Steve Hamilton's series about hero Alex McKnight. (Yes, I'm playing catchup with Steve Hamilton.) The back cover has advance-praise blurbs from some heavy hitters: Michael Connelly, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Harlan Coben, George P. Pelecanos. And they are not wrong: it's an excellent outing, and to my (dim) memory, head and shoulders better than the previous four books in the series. (And that's saying something, since I already liked Steve Hamilton enough to continue reading his books.)

Anyway, this book: Alex—really—wants to get out of the drama and peril of his life-so-far, and just run his tourist cabin business in the scenic Michigan Upper Peninsula. And rebuild the cabin that the bad guys in the previous book burned down. He is helped with the cabin rebuilding by reconciling with his old friend Vinnie, a Native American living up the road.

But Vinnie turns out to be no help whatsoever in keeping Alex out of the white-knight business. Vinnie's ex-con brother, Tom, has gone missing while guiding a hunting party up in the wilds of northern Ontario. And since—technically—Tom's having left the US is a parole violation, Vinnie and his family don't want to get law enforcement involved on either side of the border. So Alex and Vinnie are off to Canada to track down Tom and the hunters, based on only vague notions of where they went.

Without getting too spoilerish, what ensues is a lot of mystery, ominous/creepy suspense, mortal danger, and murderous wilderness hijinks. It really is a page-turner; although I usually take several days to read novels, I finished this one up in a single day. Found it difficult to put down.