Alex McKnight series by Steve Hamilton (ePub Retail)

STEVE HAMILTON’s first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Best First Private Eye Novel Contest before becoming a USA Today bestseller and winning both an Edgar and a Shamus Award for Best First Novel. His stand-alone novel The Lock Artist was named a New York Times Notable Crime Book, received an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and then went on to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel, making him only the second author (after Ross Thomas) to win Edgars for both Best First Novel and Best Novel. He attended the University of Michigan, where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for writing, and now lives in Cottekill, New York, with his wife and their two children.

Alex McKnight series:
Beneath the Book Tower (#0.5): Before the tragic event that made him seek refuge in a remote corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Alex McKnight was a Detroit police officer. It’s a warm summer night, and Alex is out riding the night shift with his partner Franklin. There’s no shortage of trouble to be found on the dark streets of Motown. But on this particular night, Franklin has his own agenda.

A Cold Day in Paradise (#1): Other than the bullet lodged near his heart, former Detroit cop Alex McKnight thought he had put the nightmare of his partner’s death and his own near-fatal injury behind him. After all, the man convicted of the crimes has been locked away for years. But in the small town of Paradise, Michigan, where McKnight has traded his badge for a cabin in the woods, a murderer with the same unmistakable trademarks appears to be back. McKnight can’t understand who else would know the intimate details of the old murders. And it seems like it’ll be a frozen day in Hell before McKnight can unravel truth from deception in a town that’s anything but Paradise.

Winter of The Wolf Moon (#2): Ex-cop and sometime-P.I. Alex McKnight endures the bitter winter of Michigan's Upper Peninsula in his log cabin with warm fires and cold Molsons. When Dorothy Parrish, a young Ojibwa woman asks him for shelter from her violent boyfriend, McKnight agrees. But after secreting her in one of his cabins, he finds her gone the next morning. McKnight suspects vicious, hockey-playing Lonnie Bruckman of abducting the woman, but his search for her brings on more suspects, bruising encounters, and a thickening web of crime, all obscured by the relentless whiplash of brutal snowstorms. From the secret world of the Ojibwa reservation to the Canadian border and deep into the silent woods, someone is out to kill--and McKnight is driving right into the line of fire...

The Hunting Wind (#3): Before he became a private investigator, before he served in the Detroit police, and long before he retreated to the wintry reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Alex McKnight played ball in the minor leagues. He doesn’t spend much time thinking about those days, at least not until a former teammate comes looking for him. . . .

The man’s here to ask a favor. He wants Alex to help him find the woman with whom he had a brief, passionate affair three decades ago. Who is Alex to deny his friend a chance to ward off a classic midlife chill by rekindling an old flame? But as the search deepens, McKnight begins to suspect that he hasn’t been told the full story. And there might just be a reason why this mysterious woman is so hard to find.

North of Nowhere (#4): After a game of cards turns into a professional heist, Alex McKnight finds himself lying facedown on the floor with a gun to the back of his head. When the dust settles, McKnight is one of the police chief’s lead suspects. Worse, one of the other card players has the same idea, and he has no qualms about exercising some vigilante justice of his own. Now, Alex knows he is the only one who can uncover the truth. But he’s about to discover how dark this conspiracy truly is—or how close to guilt he actually stands. . . .

Blood is The Sky (#5): Reluctant investigator Alex McKnight finds himself drawn by friendship into a long drive north. The brother of Alex’s longtime Ojibwa friend Vinnie LeBlanc works as a hunting guide, serving the rich clients from downstate. It seems that Vinnie’s brother and his most recent group of hunters have vanished in northern Ontario, and Vinnie is scared enough to ask Alex to help him find them.

Their arrival sets in motion a heart-pounding string of events that leaves Alex and his friend miles from civilization, stranded in the heart of the Canadian wilderness with no food, no weapons---and no way out. And there’s someone out there who definitely does not want them to make it back alive.

Ice Run (#6): Alex McKnight is in love. Even though he met Natalie Reynaud, an officer from the Ontario Provincial Police, under difficult circumstances, they share a common bond of solitude, as well as the same nightmare - they're both cops who buried their partners. It's Alex's first real relationship in years, which in some ways is terrifying. But Natalie has her own fears to deal with, and her own secrets.

They brave a violent snowstorm to spend the night together in a historic hotel in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. There, they meet a mysterious old man who seems to know a lot about Natalie, and about her family. But they won't be getting any answers from him - he'll be found frozen to death in a snowbank the very next morning. From this single incident, an old blood feud will be reignited, one going back decades to an event buried in her family's past - an event that even now can still drive men to kill each other.

As much as Natalie doesn't want Alex to become entangled in this web of lies and hatred, there's no way he can let her face this danger alone. This is a man who has gotten beaten up, shot at, and even dragged behind a snowmobile, all because he's a sucker for a friend in need.

How much farther will he go for love?

A Stolen Season (#7): On a freezing night in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a night that wouldn’t feel so unusual if it wasn’t the Fourth of July, an antique wooden boat plows full-speed into a line of old railroad pilings in the shallow waters of Waishkey Bay. With Alex McKnight on the rescue mission, the passengers are brought safely to shore. Alex figures the story’s over…but he’s dead wrong.

The boat accident’s happy ending turns into a living hell for Alex when he discovers that the three men he saved are actually connected to a deadly drug-smuggling syndicate that has his girlfriend, Ontario police officer Natalie Reynaud, deep undercover five hundred miles away. Now it’s up to Alex to do damage control on both sides of the border—and protect the woman he loves—before the cycle of violence comes around full circle…

Misery Bay (#8): On a frozen January night, a young man loops one end of a long rope over the branch of a tree. The other end he ties around his neck. A snowmobiler will find him thirty-six hours later, his lifeless eyes staring out at the endless cold water of Lake Superior. It happens in a lonely corner of the Upper Peninsula, in a place they call Misery Bay.

Alex McKnight does not know this young man, and he won’t even hear about the suicide until another cold night, two months later and 250 miles away, when the door to the Glasgow Inn opens and the last person Alex would ever expect to see comes walking in to ask for his help.

What seems like a simple quest to find a few answers will turn into a nightmare of sudden violence and bloody revenge, and a race against time to catch a ruthless killer. McKnight knows all about evil, of course, having faced down a madman who killed his partner and left a bullet next to his heart. Mobsters, drug dealers, hit men—he’s seen them all, and they’ve taken away almost everything he’s ever loved. But none of them could have ever prepared him for the darkness he’s about to face.

Die A Stranger (#9): Late one night, a plane lands on a deserted airstrip. Five dead bodies are found there the next morning. And now Vinnie LeBlanc is missing.

Vinnie is a member of the Ojibwa Indian tribe and he just might be Alex McKnight’s best friend. So Alex can’t help but be worried when he disappears. There’s a deadly crime war creeping into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Alex never would have thought that his friend could be involved. But after an unexpected stranger arrives in town, Alex will soon find out that the stakes are higher than he ever could have imagined.

Let It Burn (#10): Even though Alex McKnight swore to serve and protect Detroit as a police officer, a trip to Motown these days is a trip to a past he’d just as soon forget. The city will forever remind him of his partner’s death and of the bullet still lodged in his own chest. So he’s more than happy to stay in the little town of Paradise, three hundred miles and half a lifetime away.

Then he gets a call from his old sergeant. It turns out that a young man Alex helped put away will be getting out of prison. That one big case marked the highlight of his career, before his partner was killed, before his marriage fell apart, before he left Detroit, forever. Now that man is about to walk free.

When the sergeant invites Alex downstate to have a drink for old times’ sake, it’s an offer he would normally refuse. However, there’s a certain female FBI agent he can’t stop thinking about, so he gets in his truck and he goes back to Detroit. While there, he’s reminded of something about that last case, a seemingly small piece of the puzzle that he never got to share. It’s not something anyone wants to hear, but Alex can’t let go of this gut feeling that they arrested the wrong man.

And that the real killer not only got away, but went on to kill again.

And again.

And again.

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