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Ice Run: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) | 
| Author: Steve Hamilton
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy Used: $0.56
You Save: $21.39 (97%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 567409
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0312301219
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312301217
ASIN: 0312301219
Publication Date: June 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Product Description
The thing was sitting on the hallway carpet, right in front of the door to our room. . . I pulled the napkin off. Underneath was a hat, upside down, filled with ice and snow. . ."What the hell," I said. I bent down and picked it up.
"That's the hat he was wearing, right? The old man downstairs?"
"It is," I said. "But why?"
"Wait a minute," she said. "Is there something else inside there?"
She was right. I reached into the frozen mess and pulled out a piece of paper. There were five words written on it with an unsteady hand.
"What does it say?" she said.
I didn't answer. I just turned the piece of paper and showed it to her.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
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?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
Another very good book January 7, 2008
I've bought each Alex McKnight novel right when it's been released, and I just re-read "Ice Run." Steve Hamilton is an excellent writer; he always has a great plot and his atmospheric writing is tops, with references to heavy snow, cold, and desolate places. The settings for his McKnight novels are great; this one includes Ontario, Soo Michigan and Soo Canada, and Mackinac Island in addition to the Paradise, Michigan, base. My only quibble is that at one point Hamilton has Alex filling his gas tank in Canada and notes the imperial gallons. Canada hasn't used imperial gallons in decades; gas is purchased by the liter.
 extraordinare setting December 21, 2006
Reading this book when the wind blew you felt it, when Alex was out walking up a hill in a snow storm you felt weak in the legs and frozen in the face. When Vinnie stood up off the snow mobile and shook himself like a dog looking like a snowman you could visulize what he felt. Yes, Mr. Hamilton is a fine writer and his plotting is first class also. I will be reading the last book he has written next and can say I will wait impatiently for the next one.
Another winner for Steve Hamilton October 19, 2006
It's January, and Alex McKnight is hoping to beat the first really killer storm so that he can spend a romantic weekend with Natalie Reynaud - a weekend at the Ojibway Hotel in Soo, Michigan. This is Alex's suggestion, made when Natalie offers to come to his place for a change. He looks around and sees, "One single bed. The old couch, sagging in the middle. Two rough wooden tables. This sad wreck of a place, after fifteen years of living all by myself. This is what she'd see. My God.", and realizes that his relationship with Natalie isn't ready for her to see this. Not yet.
As with so many things in Alex's life, getting to the Ojobway isn't easy and takes much longer than he had expected, but he does make it. He and Natalie have dinner, where an elderly gentleman seems to know Alex. Alex doesn't recognize him, and neither does Natalie. They are unaware that the man leaves the Ojibway and winds up freezing to death . They don't know why he leaves his hat, a really good homburg, full of snow and ice, on the floor outside their hotel room.
Alex takes the hat to the police when he realizes that it belongs to Simon Grant, who is the man from the hotel. After telling Chief Maven the story of the man and the hat, and his curiousity about why Simon Grant seemed to know him, Alex gives Chief Maven the hat to return to the family. Chief Maven tells Alex to leave it at that, not to bother the family, to just walk away from the whole thing. Past readers of Steve Hamilton's books featuring Alex McKnight know that this isn't going to happen.
The truly curious twist is that Simon Grant truly didn't know Alex McKnight. He recognized Natalie. Once this fact surfaces, the reader learns a whole lot more about Natalie, and her family, and why she is the person she is. This goes a long way toward explaining the attraction that she has for Alex, and vice versa.
Ice Run focuses a great deal on the past, a past of which Natalie has only a very partial awareness. The circumstances of Simon Grant's death, and the subsequent three-on-one beating given to Alex by Grant's family after the funeral, impel Natalie, reluctantly, to speak to her mother after a silence of five years. The ripple effects of Natalie meeting her mother are catastrophic for the three families involved. The intricacies of the plot make it difficult to say more without saying too much.
All of this takes place in the dead of winter in northern Michigan, the manifestations of which become almost another character in Ice Run. The beating Alex suffers at the hands of Grant's children is brutal. While Alex loses no body parts to frost-bite in Ice Run, there are several scenes where winter in all its savage and impartial splendor nearly kills him. And yet he persists.
Ice Run showcases Alex McKnight's character. There are other people around him (Vinnie, Leon, Jackie) who sometimes see to the heart of the matter at hand more quickly than Alex. Natalie is certainly better at assessing a situation with some degree of common sense, recognizing when to dance around a situation as opposed to barging in head first. But Alex, once he's made up his mind, pursues the truth with a dogged determination, a persistence in the face of adversity and common sense which most of us (I suspect) lack. He's no Galahad - he lacks the looks, and the guile. But he embodies, as few men do, the best parts of what we consider to be the knightly code of honor. He believes, literally, that the truth will set you free. What he endures in the pursuit of truth matters not in the long run. And Alex endures a hell of a lot in Ice Run.
Ice Run is the sixth in the Alec McKnight series. It is not necessary to have read the previous five in order to enjoy Ice Run, although I certainly recommend it, if for no other reason than the wonderful writing. Hamilton keeps getting better and better; it is a joy as a reader to watch that improvement as each book comes out. If you like a good plot, multi-dimensional characters, an incredible setting, and writing that sweeps you into another world . . . then Hamilton should be on your list. Ice Run should be on your list.
"Never sleep with a woman who has more problems than you," April 25, 2005
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
warns Jackie, friend of Alex McKnight and Vinnie Leblanc and owner of the Glasgow Inn, venue for heady discussions and macho teasing between the main characters.
Previously we are introduced to Constable Natalie Reynaud, who like Alex loses a partner. Alex goes to comfort her and, well I guess he does. And so starts "Ice Run," Alex having fallen for the attractive Constable.
But it would take someone of lesser intellect than the characters, and ANY reader, to note that Natalie doesn't feel the same way. This is not like Tangier in "The Nautical Chart" or Mattie in "Body heat." She's not using our favorite retired Motor City Detective. She's just . . . . not all there. There is something about her that is incomplete and Mr. Hamilton presents this nicely. He tells us that 'she has some serious issues' and he'll tell us in a couple of hundred pages what they are. Unfortunately Alex doesn't hear that or can't put it together so he stumbles around for what seems the whole winter.
He gets caught up in the periphery of her life, he takes another terrible beating, and he immerses himself in the ghostly world of family secrets.
This is a well written book and I gladly feel it is of 5 star caliber. I think I would like more of Vinnie in the 7th selection. The two blood brothers play off of eachother well, alright, somewhat like Hawk and Spenser and Elvis and Joe. But there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you get a more dimensional view of the main ingredients through the eyes of a partner. In this genre, that's probably not so with a girlfriend.
Well written; nice twists; again an almost James Dickey - like description of the wilderness. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
4+ As chilling as a frosty glass of lemonade on a hot October 3, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
summer's eve; ICE RUN has us ski-boarding after Alex McKnight in this latest of the Steve Hamilton's series. Just the pace of the book is enough to warm you! Let me tell you; if I found a hat (wouldn't matter what kind) on my doorstep with a note that read "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE"; I'd run for cover and stay there.
But not Alex! Off he goes in the worst snow storm of the season in the UP of Michigan; crossing the Canadian border every few hours as easily as I cross my t's. Back and forth in search of the story behind the old man who left the hat and the note outside his hotel room door and then proceeded to wander out into the way-below-zero night only to be found the next day frozen to death.
This all happens while he is rendevousing with a woman with whom he thinks he is in love, but for the life of him cannot figure out. One minute she is saying "Come here, Alex" and the next she is pushing him away and doesn't want to see him anymore. But...and this adds to the allure of the novel...the mystery revolves around HER and is slowly seeping into her everyday life from her very complicated past.
The forward rush of the prose seems to make a path through snow and ice...his bone-crushing opposition made my bones ache...his turmoil with Naltalie adds pathos...and of course his friends, as always, add character and color to an already exciting story line.
Steve Hamilton has never disappointed me. Although ICE RUN is the sixth of the series ; each novel, because of his superb and comprehensive style could easily stand alone.
I hope there is a lot more of Alex left in the talented pen of Steve Hamilton. Kudos to a great teller of tales mysterious and compelling!
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