North of Nowhere

North of Nowhere: Lying face down on the floor with a gun to the back of his head is where Alex McKnight finds himself after a game of cards turns into a professional heist at the home of local developer Win Vargas. When the dust settles, McKnight is one of police chief Roy Maven's lead suspects. Worse, Vargas's own sense of vigilante justice has targeted the former private eye as well, and the brash millionaire may be responsible for the sudden disappearance of Alex's best friend Jackie.Now, with officials pointed in the wrong direction and his closest allies either missing or in jail, Alex knows he is the only one who can uncover the truth. But McKnight can't possibly know how dark this conspiracy truly is - or how close to guilt he actually stands.

"Agreeable plot twists (the revelation of whodunit really is a surprise) and thoughtfully engages some larger questions about wilderness real estate developments and the limits of friendship." (Washington Post)

• North of Nowhere (Unabridged) - iTunes Audiobook

  Price

  $17.95 Download on iTunes
  (as of 2010-09-04 7:40 PDT)

  Publisher

  Brilliance Audio

  Shop

  Apple iTunes Store

  Format

  iTunes Audiobook

  Publish Date

  Jul 15, 2010

  Length

  7 hours 35 minutes

  Narrator

  Narrator:Dan John Miller Preview

  Presented by

  Audible.com

  Product Description / Editorial Review

  Lying face down on the floor with a gun to the back of his head is where Alex McKnight finds himself after a game of cards turns into a professional heist at the home of local developer Win Vargas. When the dust settles, McKnight is one of police chief Roy Maven's lead suspects. Worse, Vargas's own sense of vigilante justice has targeted the former private eye as well, and the brash millionaire may be responsible for the sudden disappearance of Alex's best friend Jackie.Now, with officials pointed in the wrong direction and his closest allies either missing or in jail, Alex knows he is the only one who can uncover the truth. But McKnight can't possibly know how dark this conspiracy truly is - or how close to guilt he actually stands.
  
  "Agreeable plot twists (the revelation of whodunit really is a surprise) and thoughtfully engages some larger questions about wilderness real estate developments and the limits of friendship." (Washington Post) — Source: Apple iTunes Store

  

• North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) - Mass Market Paperback

  Price

  $7.99 $4.33 (46% Off) Buy from Amazon.com
  (as of 2010-09-04 6:05 PDT)

  Rating

  4.0 (28 reviews)

  Publisher

  Minotaur Books

  Shop

  Amazon

  Format

  Mass Market Paperback

  Publish Date

  May 18, 2003

  Sales Rank

  297007

  ISBN

  0312983816

  ISBN-13

  9780312983819

  Edition

  1st

  Pages

  352

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  • North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight Mysteries) (Audio CD)
  • North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Kindle Edition)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight) (Audio CD)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight) (Audio CD)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight) (Audio CD)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight) (Audio CD)
  • North of nowhere (Hardcover)
  • North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Kindle Edition)
  • North of Nowhere : An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Mysteries) (Hardcover)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight) (Paperback)
  • North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Mysteries) (Hardcover)
  • North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight Mysteries) (Audio Cassette)

  Product Description / Editorial Review

  Steve Hamilton's debut novel A Cold Day In Paradise was the first novel to capture mystery's three most prestigious awards-the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony awards for best first novel. Now North of Nowhere returns to the beautiful and dangerous landscapes of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where former Detroit cop Alex McKnight's attempts to leave civilization behind only lead to disaster...
  
  Lying facedown on the floor with a gun to the back of his head is where Alex McKnight finds himself after a game of cards turns into a professional heist at the home of local developer Win Vargas. When the dust settles, McKnight is one of police chief Roy Maven's lead suspects. Worse, Vargas' own sense of vigilante justice has targeted the former private eye as well, and the brash millionaire may be responsible for the sudden disappearance of Alex's best friend, Jackie. Now, with officials pointed in the wrong direction and his closest allies either missing or in jail, Alex knows he is the only one who can uncover the truth. But McKnight can't possibly know how dark this conspiracy truly is-or how close to guilt he actually stands...
  
  That Steve Hamilton has won a following by writing private-eye novels about a guy who has no interest in being a PI is testament both to his storytelling talents and readers' hunger for fresh approaches to this genre. North of Nowhere finds ex-Detroit cop Alex McKnight celebrating his 49th birthday by retreating to his cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he laments his personal and career failures. Eventually, though, McKnight is coaxed out with the prospect of a poker game, hosted by wealthy contractor Winston Vargas, only to have the game interrupted by armed men in masks, who empty Vargas's safe and leave clues suggesting that Alex and his fellow players engineered the heist. Now, McKnight really has reason to feel sorry for himself. But instead, he goes after the gunmen, along the way swapping sucker punches with Vargas, shaking down his former detective partner (who videotaped the thieves' escape), and discovering that even his friends harbor secrets that could get them all killed. This fourth McKnight outing (after 2001's The Hunting Wind) is a fine showcase for Hamilton's lithesome prose. The pace is brisk, the episodes often humorous, and the tale brims with an infectious reverence for its natural setting ("God help me, on a summer night when the sun is going down, it is the most beautiful place on earth"). If Hammett moved the detective story from the drawing room into the mean streets, Hamilton has proved that the north woods have their own potential for homicidal intrigue. --J. Kingston Pierce — Source: Amazon

  Customer Reviews

  I have never seen so many typos

  I like this series, but the typos in hte Kindle edition are way too distracting. I have never seen so many.

  Rating: 3
  North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) review by S. Payton, 2010-08-05

  The dumb stay dumb!

  Alex McKnight spends half of this book telling us what a stupid and meaningless failure he is, and the other half proving it. Chief Roy Maven is still dumb as a post and twice as stupid (to make McKnight look good in comparison?). Leon Prudell quits the P.I. biz.
  
  I keep wishing that someone in this series would develop some brains, but no one ever does. Maven remains so incompetent, he couldn't solve a crime even if he saw it happen right in front of him. McKnight is still a brainless clod, and his friends pat him on the back only to find a nice soft spot to sink a knife into.
  
  I picked up two of Hamilton's Alex McKnight books from the 20 cent rack and feel like I didn't get my money's worth.

  Rating: 1
  North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) review by Wes Prang, 2010-07-30

  Fun Read

  This is not the best book in the Alex McKnight series, but I still enjoyed reading it. Fun characters, but the plot is a bit of a stretch. I thought the gun battle on Lake Superior was unrealistic, but hey - this is fiction. I enjoy geography and location stories; so I liked how Hamilton provides the reader with a good sense of place. I noticed that a few reviewers didn't care for this, but I like it.

  Rating: 3
  North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) review by F. Schulze, 2010-04-04

  Good holiday reading

  This is the kind of book you pick up on a weekend away at a friend's holiday house when you realize that you've left the new Lee Child that you were planning to read behind at home. You haven't read any of the others in the series but it looks reasonably intriguing and it's fewer than 200 pages, so you figure there'll be time to knock it off before you have to head home on Sunday. The engaging writing style quickly pulls you in and you find yourself enjoying the narrator's witticisms. It's a story about a former cop, living in remote northern Michigan, who is present when an armed robbery takes place at a poker game that he's attending. He is drawn into investigating it when his friends are implicated. The stakes go up when one of the robbers is found dead. The story unfolds at a satisfying pace and you annoy your spouse by refusing to go out for a walk, preferring to stay in and keep reading. There's an icy silence all the way home in the car but at least the book was good, similar in feel to Simon Kernick.

  Rating: 4
  North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) review by Julia Flyte, 2009-06-06

  Presentation, not content problems

  This is not a review of the content or the plot of this novel. My copy had so many pages blotched it was impossible to read the text in may places.

  Rating: 1
  North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex McKnight Novels) review by Gordon Ross, 2009-06-02

  

• North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight Series #4) - Mass Market Paperback

  Price

  $7.99 $7.19 (10% Off) Buy from Barnes & Noble
  (as of 2010-09-04 19:01 PDT)

  Rating

  3.5 (5 reviews)

  Publisher

  St. Martin's Press

  Shop

  Barnes & Noble

  Format

  Mass Market Paperback

  Publish Date

  May 2003

  Sales Rank

  106066

  ISBN

  0312983816

  ISBN-13

  9780312983819

  Pages

  352

  Series

  Alex McKnight Series, #4

  Biography

  Steve Hamilton was born in Detroit and attended the University of Michigan, where he was awarded the prestigious Avery Hopwood Prize for writing. His first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, won the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest before going on to win both the Edgar and Shamus Awards for Best First Novel. In 2006, Steve won the Michigan Author Award for his outstanding body of work. He lives in Cottekill, New York, with his wife, Julia, and their two children. Visit his Web site at authorstevehamilton.com.

  From the Publisher

  "Steve Hamilton writes the kind of stories that [one] can't resist."
  The New York Times Book Review
  
  Steve Hamilton's debut novel A Cold Day In Paradise was the first novel to capture mystery's three most prestigious awards-the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony awards for best first novel. Now North of Nowhere returns to the beautiful and dangerous landscapes of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where former Detroit cop Alex McKnight's attempts to leave civilization behind only lead to disaster...
  
  Lying facedown on the floor with a gun to the back of his head is where Alex McKnight finds himself after a game of cards turns into a professional heist at the home of local developer Win Vargas. When the dust settles, McKnight is one of police chief Roy Maven's lead suspects. Worse, Vargas' own sense of vigilante justice has targeted the former private eye as well, and the brash millionaire may be responsible for the sudden disappearance of Alex's best friend, Jackie. Now, with officials pointed in the wrong direction and his closest allies either missing or in jail, Alex knows he is the only one who can uncover the truth. But McKnight can't possibly know how dark this conspiracy truly is-or how close to guilt he actually stands...

  Synopsis

  "Hamilton['s]...tensile prose...reflects the dramatic, often violent contradictions of people who live on the edge of the world."
  The New York Times Book Review
  
  "Superb!"
  Publishers Weekly
  
  "A brisk, well-plotted tale."
  Kirkus Reviews
  
  "Terrific!"
  Flint Journal
  
  Enjoy These Other Alex Mcknight Mysteries From Edgar Award-Winning Author Steve Hamilton:
  
  The Hunting Wind Winter of the Wolf Moon A Cold Day In Paradise

  
  — Source: Barnes & Noble

  Customer Reviews

  Best lead character to come along since Travis McGee by John McDonald.

  I am always looking to find a replacement for my beloved John McDonald who wrote among his numerous novels, the Travis McGee "color" mystery's. He wrote the "Long Lavender Look", "Pale Gray for Guilt","Free Fall in Crimson", and so many more, 21 in all before he passed away in 1986. I truly enjoy Sue Grafton and her female detective, Kinsey Milhone, but I haven't quite found that substitute for the quirky but always thinking beach bum, Travis McGee. In Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight we have the retired cop, from bullet wounds (with one still inside) and mental scars from the traumatic way he and his partner were taken down, but who is still strong enough to smell out trouble and work out a break down the walls approach to a solution. Sometimes it gets real messy, but hang in there it's coming. It's never slow and I became so involved in the second novel with all the moving around the area that I "Mapquested" it so I could see the lay of the land. Now I want to go there sometime and get the feel of this very "outback" country in the North of America. It has the perfect settings for the exact elements he is looking for as a writer. There are weather extremes, remote locations, a kind of backwoods law of the jungle,and enough connections to fill the six degrees of separation requirement plausibly. For me it is "grabber" reading. Once I'm in the first chapter, I'm hooked and look forward to spending the next couple of hours devouring his every word. If you like Travis McGee, I think you'll like Alex McKnight, another outstanding "Mac" detective for mystery lovers.

  Rating: 5
  North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight Series #4) review by ThewordfromHerd, 2009-12-27

  One of the best in the Alex McKnight series

  The story starts the way all of the McKnight books do....he's reluctantly pulled into doing something he doesn't want to do. The story is told very cleverly and the ending is a total surprise. This is a worthy read.

  Rating: 4
  North of Nowhere (Alex McKnight Series #4) review by smoochys, 2009-05-23

  

• Customer Reviews

  "North of Nowhere" customer reviews and ratings