Did this on on audio and while I enjoyed the story my complaint is with the narrator. He voice throughout just sounded too friendly for a private eye novel. No sense of underlying 'thoughness' so to speak. ( )

Every Steve Hamilton book I read is better yet! This one is fabu;ous! ( )

Alex McKnight used to be a police officer in Detroit. After he was seriously wounded in an incident in which his partner was killed, he retired from the force and moved up to Paradise, where he rents out several cabins to tourists and finds himself (often reluctantly) in the private investigator game. One day he gets a phone call from his former commanding officer in Detroit, telling him that a man he had helped put in prison was being released after a number of years. It was a case Alex hadn't thought about in many years, because it happened just before he was wounded.

The phone call brings him back to Detroit, and the decline of the city really hits home for him. Having a drink with his former sergeant, he starts thinking about the case that could have launched his career if he hadn't been wounded. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes he has questions about what transpired. These are questions nobody wants to hear, and Alex isn't sure he wants to know the answers, but he starts to wonder whether the right man was sent to prison all those years ago. And when other similar murders are uncovered, Alex is determined to try and help solve the mystery--and understand what happened in the first place.

The only thing that was missing from this book, by and large, was Paradise, as the story mostly took place in Detroit. And barely any Paradise meant barely any Jackie or Vinnie, although Alex's former partner and constant guide, Leon, did make a few appearances. If the Paradise connection is what you like most about Hamilton's books, you'll be slightly disappointed; I enjoyed getting to see this other dimension in Alex's life and coming to understand the events that have made Alex who he is. I just hope that Steve Hamilton doesn't veer down this path too often. ( )

AUTHOR Hamilton, Steve
TITLE: Let It Burn
DATE READ: 03/21/2016
RATING 4.5/B+
GENRE/ PUB DATE/PUBLISHER / # OF PAGES Crime Fiction / 2013/ Minotaur Books / 276 pages
SERIES/STAND-ALONE: #10 in Alex McKnight series
CHARACTERS Alex McKnight/private eye
TIME/PLACE: 2013 / Detroit, MI
FIRST LINES Summers die hard in Paradise.
COMMENTS: I don't know what it was -- the setting of Detroit rather than the UP, knowing that this may be the last Alex McKnight book or more than likely just me and a mood thing -- but it took me quite awhile to settle into this book. A bit of a change since Alex is back in Detroit after he receives a call re his last case, the one that put him on disability for the gunshot wound . It has been 10 years and Darryl King is being released. Darryl King had been convicted of robbery/murder … Alex worked on the beginning of this but then was out due to being shot. He returns to Detroit, visits Darryl's mother and ends up researching the case -- finding a few hinky things that don't add up to Darryl King being guilty. In the end another good story! ( )

I crossed through the northen reaches of the city, turning down one street after another. I saw the abandoned houses. I saw the garbage and the graffiti and the high weeds. I saw the charred remains of houses that had burned down. This is something Detroit had always been known for, of course. Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, when people would come from literally all over the world to watch the city burn. Every fireman on the job would be out that night and just about every cop, too. It always felt like a losing battle, but now . . .
Now it was like the whole city just said, all together . . . Let it burn.

The bulk of this series is set on the UP of Michigan, but the character Alex McKnight has his law-enforcement roots in Detroit, and the bulk of this installment in the series sees him back on his old turf. Author Steve Hamilton is a native of Detroit, and I think that perhaps he is mourning the fate of his hometown through the eyes of his protagonist in this novel.

"What the hell," I said out loud. I was looking at the shell of what was once a monument. A palace. And I was thinking of everything else I had seen that day. "How can a whole city come to this?"

This latest installment may be the best yet in the series. The release of a convicted murderer that Alex helped put away has the former cop taking another look at the case and at his old precinct. The first section alternates chapters between the present-day life of Alex, and those last few weeks of his career as a Detroit police officer. The suspense was such that I had to put the book down because I couldn't take the suspense, then had to pick it right back up to see what came next. ( )