Night Work – Book #20

|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Title |Night Work |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Author |Steve Hamilton |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Genre |Mystery |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Pages |294 |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Publisher |St. Martin’s Minotaur |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|
| Copyright |2007 |
|-------------+----------------------------------------|

Synopsis (from web-site)
Joe Trumbull is not a man who scares easily. As a juvenile probation officer in Kingston, New York, he’s half cop, half social worker to the most high-risk youth in the city. And when he’s not pounding the streets, trying to keep his kids out of jail, he’s pounding a heavy bag in the gym to stay in shape.

But tonight Joe Trumbull is scared to death.

It’s been two years since his fiancée, Laurel, was brutally murdered. Two years of grief and loneliness. On this hot summer night, he’s finally going out on a blind date, his first date since Laurel’s death. He’s not looking for love, just testing the waters to see if it’s possible to live a normal life again. The thought of it is turning his knees to jelly.

Marlene Frost is a beautiful woman. She’s warm and funny, with a smile to match. After the first awkward minutes, Joe finally starts to think this isn’t such a bad idea after all. In fact, maybe this blind date will turn out to be one of the best things that ever happened to him.

He couldn’t be more wrong. Because somehow, for reasons Joe can barely understand, this one evening will mark the beginning of a new nightmare. A nightmare that will lead him to the faceless man in the shadows, and to the most terrible realization of all...

For Joe Trumbull, the past is never past. And the worst is yet to come.

Why I read It
Steve Hamilton writes a nice series of PI books based in the UP (You-Pee). The UP stands for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, an area famous for snow, trees, copper, and more snow. Anyways my parents used to live up there so I have had occasion to visit and enjoy the many sights (snow). This is why I began reading the books. This book though is his first stand alone and definitely does not take place in the UP.

What I Thought About It
It was okay. Maybe it was because I was not invested in the characters, or some of the plot points were a little much to accept, but I was not that into it. I find I am pretty jaded to exaggeration (or Hollywoodesque showiness) in my crime fiction lately.

Mormon Mentions
None – and aren’t we all glad that crime fiction is free from it :-)

Author Biography

Born and raised in Detroit, Steve Hamilton graduated from the University of Michigan where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction. In 2006, he won the Michigan Author Award for his outstanding body of work. His novels have won numerous awards and media acclaim beginning with the very first in the Alex McKnight series, A Cold Day in Paradise, which won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Mystery by an Unpublished Writer. Once published, it went on to win the MWA Edgar and the PWA Shamus Awards for Best First Novel, and was short-listed for the Anthony and Barry Awards. The awards didn't stop there but he's too modest to crow about them. Hamilton currently works for IBM in upstate New York where he lives with his wife Julia and their two children.