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A walk in the woods in U.P. Michigan

Destination: Paradise, (Upper Peninsula) Michigan

Book: Blood is the Sky by Steve Hamilton

Anyone who has read more than a few of my posts knows that I firmly believe that the traveler can find no better guide to a city or region than a good mystery.  I’ve talked about a policeman in Venice, a Park Ranger who stumbles over dead bodies in Yosemite, a hard-boiled P.I. in Boston, and a TV mystery set in Sweden, among other dark guides to lovely places.

Photo by Vera Marie Badertscher. All rights reserved.

It should be no surprise, then, that when I was heading for northern Michigan, I looked for a mystery writer who specialized in that area. I hit pay dirt with the Alex McKnight series by Steve Hamilton. Being in a hurry, I took the first McKnight story that my public library offered me, Blood is the Sky–an eerie enough sounding title.

When I read a bit about Steve Hamilton, I learned that the first book in this series,  A Cold Day in Paradise , took just about every award for mystery novels that anybody is dishing out.  Since the first one, he has written six more. Recently he has written two standalone books, the 2nd of those will be released this coming January,The Lock Artist.   Hamilton may be attempting to move toward literature of a more serious purpose, but I’m sure the many fans of Alex McKnight wish that he would get back to business in Paradise.

Paradise, by the way, is a real, actual, small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I know. I drove through it.  Mostly I remember some little aging motels and one big impressive Best Western Motel, all surrounded by forest.  It may not be my idea of Paradise in the winter time–since I do not clomp around in snowshoes or poke holes in the frozen lake for ice fishing, but the tiny town sits in the midst of some gorgeous scenery that just begs to be explored on two feet in warmer weather.

Blood is the Sky takes its name from an Ojibwa Indian name meaning sunset, and an unlucky name at that.  In this episode, Alex, a retired police officer tries to help his best friend, an Ojibwa named Vinnie who lives in a cabin near his, and they get involved in a nasty circle of people as they search for Vinnie’s brother. I could not believe all of the circumstances, and regretted some weak exposition. But I never doubted for a moment the reality of the characters and the beauty of the locale.  This was just the book to prepare me for the heavenly surroundings of Paradise. Fortunately, in real life I was insulated from the possibilities of violence lurking in a woods full of bears, tough-minded moose, and in fiction, some nasty humans as well.

Disclaimer time. I was in the Upper Peninsula (along with a couple dozen other travel writers) as a guest of the state of Michigan’s promoters of tourism . And no matter how hard they try, those nice folks from Michigan will never convince me that ice fishing is anything more than an excuse for a bunch of guys to get away from home and chores and drink beer all day. Okay? All clear?

I am always open to learning about new mystery writers and particularly those who will help me see and understand a new territory. Any suggestions??

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