MISERY BAY a Chilling Read: Continues Extended Metaphor

Steve Hamilton has followed THE LOCK ARTIST, his award-winning stand-alone thriller, with a return to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Once again readers are taken to the small town of Paradise, the Glasgow Inn, and another story featuring Alex McKnight. And once again, the weather is freezing cold. It’s a “frozen January night” readers learn when they open MISERY BAY; the eighth book in the series.

But cold lurks in every Alex McKnight story, regardless of the season. Readers first met him some thirteen years ago in A COLD DAY IN PARADISE. The former Detroit cop who’d been shot in the line of duty says, “There is a bullet in my chest, less than a centimeter from my heart. And even though that bullet has been warming inside my body for fourteen years, on a night like this when it is dark enough and the wind is blowing, that bullet feels as cold as the night itself."

Next came THE WINTER OF THE WOLF, in which readers were told, “The cold can take away a piece of you. Not just your physical body. I mean inside you. Once you freeze all the way through to your soul, you will never feel warm again.”

It was spring in THE HUNTING WIND. However, “April in Paradise is still cold enough to hurt you.” Summer had arrived in NORTH OF NOWHERE. However, Lake Superior, a prominent feature throughout the series, is “filled with pure, sweet, cold water and not much else.”

Summer had turned into autumn in BLOOD OF THE SKY, but “the days were getting shorter … the pine trees were bending in the cold October wind.”
In ICE RUN, it’s February, a time when “a few days of mild weather will soften you up for three feet of snow in one night.”

In A STOLEN SEASON, readers learn it’s “a cold, miserable night in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a night that wouldn't feel so unusual if it wasn't the Fourth of July.”

There is little I can add to those who have written reviews and those who have given book awards. All I can do is echo what has already been said. Each of these books contains a story that will satisfy the cravings of any reader who wants a complex, chilling mystery. But I do have a thought as a reader of this series.

The cold weather that is pervasive through out these novels is more than mere setting. It is an extended metaphor. The life of Alex McKnight is filled with tragic personal loss. Those who have experienced such loss in real life know it creates an icy chill deep within that no source of warmth can totally eradicate. They know the truth of the quote from THE WINTER OF THE WOLF.

Enjoyment Grows On Second Visit with Susan Albert's Darling Dahlias

I was shall we say, to use an euphuism, a bit put out when it was learned over a year ago that Susan Wittig Albert was not taking readers back to Pecan Springs, Texas, but to some small town in Alabama; not back to China Bayles and her friends, but to some group of ladies call the “The Darling Dahlias.”

However, this was Susan Albert. To my way of thinking, one does not just dump an author who has entertained you for many years. So The DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE CUCUMBER TREE was read, admittedly with a degree of basis from the start. What was my reaction when finished?

Let’s say it was like the first time your wife fixed a dish of potato salad that you kept talking about, the one you kept saying you loved when you were a child. When she asked, “How is it?” you said, “Very good,” but did not give voice to the thought, “It’s not the same as Mom’s.”

But from that time forward, you ate a hearty portion whenever she made the salad, and said, “Very good,” with more enthusiasm. That was my reaction after reading THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE NAKED LADIES, the second book in the new series. How can one not enjoy the perfectly captured mood and flavor of the 1930s as it is portrayed in Darling, a small fictional town in Alabama?

The Darling Dahlias, as the members of the local gardening club call themselves, are delightful characters. There are thirteen of them, listed at the beginning of the book in what one could call a mini town directory. But I still don’t have them sorted out as well as I do the folks back in Pecan Springs. After all, I’ve made eighteen or so trips to Pecan Springs over the years. Give me time with the Dahlias.

And the best is yet to come. The author has announced that a third trip to Alabama is in the works. That trip will be titled "The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose."

And next April (2012), readers will go again to Pecan Springs. The author has announced that “CAT’S CLAW, a Pecan Springs mystery,” will “feature Sheila Dawson, with China Bayles.” It should be an interesting visit, with the apparent focus on chief of police Sheila, a chance to see how things have worked out since the announcement of her engagement to Sheriff Blackie Blackwell. Did they get married? And who resigned from law enforcement?