It's the end of summer
in Paradise. Paradise, Michigan, that is, on the Upper Peninsula, and
Alex McKnight is anticipating another long and cold winter when he
gets a call from Detroit, telling him a killer he helped catch, just
days before the shootout where his partner was killed and he took the
bullet that is still lodged inside him, is about to be released from
prison.
Steve Hamilton weaves
the two stories together—the summer Alex lost Franklin his partner
was also when he began to lose his wife as well—and does it well,
mostly because this is a story about the city of Detroit as well. It
is a catalogue of loss, of the way a city can suffer from exhaustion
and become a shell of itself, and the people who once coped with it
in its decline can become shells of themselves as well. It's never
overdone; in fact, if anything the landscapes are sketched in very
sparingly, and the intimate details of Alex's own loss are more
hinted at than described in their agonies. But that helps it all
work, as the basic plot, the resolving of the injustice done Darryl
King, becomes a torturous maze which Alex, in that stubborn way he's
exhibited previously, plugs away at until the path through finally
appears.
Sadly, there appears to
be no path for Detroit, nor to undo or redo the past. Perhaps
Paradise, is, in the end, simply where we find shelter, where we can
insulate ourselves against the cold of loss, and the loss of things
we love.
Let It Burn by Steve
Hamilton
Orion £18.99 ISBN
9781409140771
This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)
No comments:
Post a Comment