Winter of the Wolf Moon |  | Author: Steve Hamilton
Creator: Nick Sullivan
Publisher: Sound Library
Category: Book
List Price: $64.95
Buy New: $39.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 1327125
Format: Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 6
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 6.7 x 1.6
ISBN: 0792729021
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780792729020
ASIN: 0792729021
Publication Date: May 2003
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Condition: Audio Editions Books on Cassette & CD sells only audiobooks, specializing in personalized customer service for over 20 years. All products are new, including rare and hard to find audiobooks. 100% money-back guarantee.
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Amazon.com
Snow doesn't just fall on cedars on Michigan's Upper Peninsula: it coats everything, mobile and inanimate, in a treacherously quick, dangerously thick blanket of white. As Alex McKnight observes, gazing out the window of his cabin in Paradise, "It looked like about six inches of new snow. Around here, that qualifies as scattered flurries." Given this climate, the urge to hibernate is perfectly understandable--batten down the hatches, throw another log on the fire, and wait until the spring thaw. For Alex, the denning impulse is as much psychological as it is physical. Haunted by memories of his deadly failures as a cop, a private investigator, and a lover, Alex wants nothing more than to plow his driveway, be cordial to the snowmobilers who rent his cabins, and lower his core emotional temperature to the forgetting point. Unfortunately, he's got friends who get in the way of his seasonal plans. When Vinnie LeBlanc, an Ojibwa Indian, convinces Alex to fill in as goalie for his hockey team, slap shots and hard checks are soon the least of his worries. Instead, he becomes embroiled in a tangle of conflicting allegiances; one of his opponents, Lonnie Bruckman, a bigot and a psychotic, is terrorizing the Ojibwa reservation in ways both personal and professional: he abuses his girlfriend, Dorothy Parrish, and sells "wild cat," a methamphetamine derivative, to members of the reservation. Dorothy--desperate to escape her Ojibwa heritage but reluctantly acknowledging its force--turns up on Alex's front door with a mysterious canvas bag and a plea for shelter: "'The wolf moon means it's time to protect the people around you because there are wolves outside your door.'" But the next day, she's gone. As Alex, devastated by his inability to protect Dorothy, tries to find her, he must confront Bruckman--for whom a snowmobile is less a recreational vehicle than an instrument of torture; a mysterious Russian named Molinov; the combined forces of the local police and the DEA; and, it seems, even those he has always considered friends. Luckily for Alex, Leon Prudell, "a two-hundred-forty-pound whirlwind of flannel and snowboots," who really, really wants to be a private investigator, is right there to lend a hand. Leon adds a welcome note of comic relief to the novel (as does, to be sure, Alex's own dryly sardonic wit), but the book's tone is largely elegiac: "It was the middle of the day, but with the sun hidden behind the clouds and the weight of snow in the air, there was an oddly muted light, dim yet persistent, as each snowflake seemed to glow with its own energy. I stopped for a moment ... hypnotized by the sight of it and by the sound of my own breathing." Surviving winter takes many kinds of courage, and the reader will be enthralled by Alex's efforts to disprove Molinov's ominous warning, "'Once you freeze all the way through to your soul, you will never feel warm again. You'll see.'" Steve Hamilton won the 1999 Edgar Award for his first Alex McKnight mystery, A Cold Day in Paradise, and Winter of the Wolf Moon will reassure readers that neither beginner's luck nor sophomore jinx troubles this author. --Kelly Flynn
Product Description
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 thinkening 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...
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| Customer Reviews: Read 41 more reviews...
 Liked it about as well as the first one. July 25, 2008
I liked this book pretty well. At least well enough to give another book of his a try sometime in the future. I like his writing style overall. I seldom read first person narratives, but he writes in a way that I forget this is first person. I found some of his ploys a little unreal. I am about the same age as the main character and if I was dragged behind a snowmobile and hospitalized I certainly would not go running off to confront a huge hoodlum in a bar the next day or two.
The Molinov letting him go ploy was silly beyond belief but it is a ploy used by a lot of writers in this genre and on the movies. Believe me, if you or I are in the position where we see a drug lord kill three people, you can bet that we are going to be next. He isn't going to let us go because he thinks we might have something in common and could be useful down the road.
But other than that I found the book enjoyable.
Decent Story but a Weak (Unsatisfactory) Second Act September 2, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the problems when a author begins a series, is that he knows that at some point he will have to create a secondary line of interest from the one that was set-up in the first book. Alex McKnight is an ex-minor league catcher and ex-Detroit Michigan Policemen who retired from the force after being shot three times in the chest, with one bullet being left close to his spine. He lives in the Upper Peninsula (UP or Yoopee) of Michigan in the town of Paradise. He makes his living by renting out cabins that have access to Lake Superior in the summer and snowmobiling trails in the winter.
More than anything, McKnight doesn't want to be a cop or even a private investigator ever again. But just like in the first book he is pulled back into criminal investigation by the whims of chaos. He has even got a
'partner' in the guise of a snowmobile salesman, Leon Prudell (who we met in the first book). His only 'friends' are a Ojibwa Indian Vinnie Le Blanco and Jackie (as Scotsman) who runs the Glasgow Inn.
The first book was filled with references to the Ojibwa way of life and the way the people of the first nations looked to the land. Yes some of it was 'hokie' but it's what makes these types of stories interesting. In this book, the Ojibwa way of life is only tangential to the story and feels as if it was thrown into the story at the last minute.
There is a lot of flippancy and smirking in the way some characters are presented. Two DEA agents are named 'Champagne' and 'Urbania'; could this be a plug for the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana? Two Russian bad guys are named, 'Roman' and 'Pearl'; the word for novel in Russian (like in French/Italian) is Roman, but I'm not sure of the "Pearl" connotation. Vinnie La Blanco's (who is an off-reservation Indian) last name translate to "The White". Throw in Mc"Knight" and the Sault (Soo Michigan) Ste. Marie Police Chief "Maven" and it starts to get a little overwhelmingly 'cutesy'.
Lastly, we are left with the knowledge that at some time in the future there will be a showdown between McKnight and a 'vicious' Russian mob boss named Molinov (he shoots two of his own men for killing an 'innocent' woman); and you get the feeling that this book was only written to prepare the way for the rest of the series. It's way too over the top when it comes to violence for violence sake.
Not to mention the unrealistic physical recovery of McKnight, after being dragged behind a snowmobile and suffering a partially collapsed lung and concussion, he walks out of the hospital the same day that his chest tube is removed. The guy is forty- eight years old and can hardly walk the day after playing goalie in a thirty minute hockey game; but can leave the hospital with a couple of broken ribs and a three inch incision in his side! Enough said, let's get back to reality.
 Striking discription and story December 1, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my second "Alex" Novel. What can you say. You can feel that snow and cold, the boredom that can develop in the Upper and the people that live there and how they cope. His living in Michigan and observations have made him a great writer, any of us that live here in Michigan can feel all that he discribes. His plotting is great also both storys had me wondering all the way to the end. I will continue to read all his books as I progress. They are all great.
Stunning!"Winter of the Wolf Moon" November 6, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I would call me an odd reader especially for a female!(46)Romance novels, etc. never have interested me.Never would I have thought a detective type story would even interest me!I couldnt put it down!I read it in a few hours!In fact I have just ordered the rest of his books!This was the first of the series I have read ,but now have all the rest coming!Should be a fine winter for my reading,of Mr. Hamilton's, Alex Mcknight series!!
Howling at the moon April 4, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
What I like about Steve Hamilton's books is the seamless transition between humor, albeit sarcastic humor, and the 'game's afoot,' the mystery. But then Hamilton's real strength isn't that but rather his poetic description of the forest, in many places along the UP still untouched, the cold, nature, the sky and the solitude. He's a little bit of James Dickey and James Lee Burke, who write of the south, while at the same time peppering the reader with the quips and glibness of Parker and Crais. A difficult task considering the solemnity of the forest and the comedic qualities of Alex and Vinnie. But Hamilton keeps Alex's tongue in check when he's painting his canvas.
The plot is fairly pedestrian. Here we have the woman in distress and the traumatized hero, Alex McKnight 'volunteered' to help her. Then you have the contiguous sanctity of the Native American culture that Detroit born Alex didn't grow up with, but respects and in many ways, embraces.
Someone is selling designer drugs on the Reservation, and Alex and his friend Vinnie LeBlanc wonder if the two events, the girl in distress and her subsequent disappearance, are related to the drug traffic. And then there's the winter.
Hamilton describes it so well you may want to click the heat in your crib up a notch. Beautiful writing, worth the more common boy meets girl, helps her out, loses her, looks for her and gets a real good beating on the journey. Hamilton has a great future, and we're the beneficiaries. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury
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