Winter of the Wolf Moon

Starred review from January 31, 2000
It's just another lovely day in Paradise... for those who love zero-degree weather and frozen pipes. This Paradise is a town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Hamilton catches up with reluctant gumshoe Alex McKnight after his debut in A Cold Day in Paradise. The frigid season finds Alex focused on snowplowing, maintaining the cabins he rents to snowmobilers and whiling away evenings at the Glasgow Inn with a few cold Canadians. After years as a cop and PI, Alex is ready to settle down to undisturbed country life. But as any good mystery writer knows (and Hamilton, who won the 1999 Edgar for Best First Novel, is no exception), that's not in the cards. One night, a young Native American, Dorothy Parrish, whose troubles are unclear but obviously serious, approaches Alex, then disappears. Her sudden disappearance has Alex presuming she's dead, and there's evidence that she was involved with ill-tempered, drug-crazed hockey player Lonnie Bruckman. Ignoring his initial trepidation to reenter the crime world, Alex vows to find Dorothy and her kidnapper--or killer. Bruckman is definitely involved, and Alex, with the help of his "partner," Leon Prudell, identifies multiple suspects. Bruckman's hockey buddies are threatening, but it soon becomes apparent that there's a more powerful force behind them. This is a most entertaining tale, peppered with wry humor and real, amusing characters. Hamilton presents a fast mystery brimming with insight into both the politics of U.S./Canadian border crimes and the relations between Native Americans and their white neighbors.