Recognized in the United States for years, the arrival of Steve Hamilton the Spanish literary market is taking place in a trickle. It seems strange that Spanish publishers have not slapped each other to get hold of one of the most powerful authors made in the USA, with the victory that this anticipates. Even more so considering that Hamilton was the second writer to win Best American Mystery Novel Award (the famous Edgar adwards) with his debut feature.
And the truth is that Hamilton has a lot to say and to offer for fans of the mystery genre. Sometimes bordering on the crime novel, but always with a narrative tension directed towards the resolution of particular enigmas, this author plays above all with the profile of his characters. Protagonists of novels who move in the ambiguity of a strangeness that arouses a thousand doubts in the reader and who end up composing a mysterious story in themselves.
No mystery is better than real knowledge of people. If Hamilton is able to turn the character into the ultimate mystery of his novels (and we believe that he does), he presents us with a clearly fruitful formula as a literary hook. The curiosity to discern the areas of chiaroscuro always awakens us, from the people in our real lives to fiction in which assumptions are triggered.
Welcome, then, to the world Steve Hamilton and enjoy reading like that old board game full of faces to be discarded "Guess Who." Play games against your intuition and the facts to guess what is hidden behind the scenes of his novels.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Steve Hamilton
Nick Mason's second life
Nick Mason buys his freedom in a real deal with the devil. Prison can be a good place to get cheap mercenaries. Those who can dispose of the good of justice as a whim to conquer based on money and good lawyers, have a real book where they can find criminals at their service at a bargain price.
After 5 years behind bars, Nick Mason finds his opportunity to abandon the high walls, tedious routines and risks inherent in coexistence among murderers, junkies, rival gangs of all kinds and easy-going jailers. The world that awaits him is splendid.
Luxury, money and few moral disquisitions for someone who never wondered the price of the opportunity. But yes, her freedom and all that tinsel world came at a high price. For his liberator, Nick is just a puppet to use for his most evil ends.
Darius Cole has chosen him to execute the dark side of his criminal plans. A guy stained like a straw man, an ex-con to carry dead in case plans go wrong.
The assumption that he has won his freedom to become a hitman raises in Nick a growing unease between his lavish new lifestyle. Who would have imagined that Nick Mason would end up finding prejudice? How could Darius Cole suppose that this simple criminal could end up defying his entire criminal structure?
It is a Dantesque fight. A David against Goliath, a frantic race towards true freedom. Because sometimes the street, and even the fantasy of opulence, can harbor the worst of condemnations, remain at the service of evil.
Nick was unaware of the most lone clauses of his acquired freedom. Only your contract cannot be claimed in any way. Nick will only have to face his liberator directly, buy his true freedom at the price of blood.
The boy
Come to meet Mike, a very special boy. The world of words became something alien and alienating to him since he lost all vital horizon in the tragic moment in which life ended up leaving him helpless and defenseless.
But in his introspection, Mike accessed a space inside him that no one had noticed, a place where the mind spread into indescribable potential. A whole decade of silence went a long way in terms of the Mike myth. The boy's environment assumes his eccentricity while ending up mythologizing him based on his growing abilities.
Among the virtues of the eccentric Mike is his ability to open any door, a very interesting incentive for the underworld world to become interested in his "signing", sniffing around his environment to find that weak point from which he can obtain his favors.
The unique gifted man will work for the mafia in exchange for this organization not taking good care of his idolized Amelia. Mike, the golden boy, must emerge from his chrysalis to free himself from this particular extortion, even at the cost of his own life.
The winter of the wolf's moon
Under this bombastic name we find a novel with police overtones in the archaic indigenous American world. In this novel there is a special symbiosis between the modern United States and the first tribes that inhabited the continent in its northern part and that are currently reduced to specific spaces.
Among these peoples are the Ojibwa. In Minnesota some colonies still survive with rites and customs maintained between the tourist claim and the real perseverance of a people denied any intrusion.
Alex McKnight is a retired police officer who lives in a cabin in Michigan, near an Ojibwa enclave. His interaction with the natives is very limited. Until a young woman from the tribe asks her for help, she is desperate not to find support among her people to defend her from the abuse of her partner. Alex offers to protect her but her good will is short-lived because the young woman disappears after hours.
In a foreign scenario for the old policeman, he will have to learn to cope in order to look for the young man. The natives know all their space, they know how to find footprints and even sniff the environment. He's just a white man lost in the woods ...
