World Famous Comics: Night Work

Award-winning author of the acclaimed Alex McKnight series Steve Hamilton delivers his eagerly awaited, breakaway thriller with Night Work.

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.

Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 3.00 out of 5.00 stars

NightWork by Steve Hamilton
I enjoy Steve Hamiltons work, especially the Alex McKnight series, and am still a fan, even though this book is not an "Alex" book.

Couldn't finish the book-waste of my time
I have really enjoyed Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight mysteries set in the UP of Michigan. I was looking forward to his new mystery. The story started with a treatis on jazz music set in an apartment over a gymnasium. Three women murdered in the first third of the novel. Was I reading another "Murder of Roger Ackroyd"? I plowed through the jumbled story line hoping that I was right-that the protagonist was the murderer and he was psychotic and leading us down a garden path of lies. But no--by the end we discover the killer was a buddy. The story line is so plodding, by the time I got to page 303 with 32 more pages to read-I skipped to the last two pages. I'm glad I didn't waste any more of my time. Steve Hamilton get back to the yoopers an tell us more about Alex and his friends, now that you killed off Joe Trumbull--what a downer.

Probation Officer Makes for Intriguing Change of Focus
I approached this novel with a little different angle. I am a retired big city probation officer, and I know that while P.O.'s are quite central to the criminal justice system, they almost never make it into novels, movies, TV shows. The novels came first, and since there is no tradition of probation officer fiction, there are few, if any, movies, and no TV shows featuring P.O.'s.

Ross McDonough wrote a good mystery in the 1950's, Meet Me at the Morgue, with a probation officer at the center, but Bantam Books thought Howard Cross wasn't hard bitten enough for the paperback trade, so there were no more Howard Cross mysteries. And so it goes. Revenge goes down better in the mystery trade than redemption.

So... I was impressed with Night Work. Steve Hamilton got the essentials of the probation officer line of work down right, and he made the contradictory mission of P.O.'s into the driving force of a plot with multiple murders. P.O. Joe Trumbull has come into contact with many hundreds of troubled people in his seven years on the job. When your job is redemption, then there are hundreds of ways for you to fail. The "T" you didn't cross, the "I" you didn't dot: you may have had a good reason, but you never know if and when you will pay. I can remember my own self thinking, please let no one die on my watch.

I hope that we see more of this small town probation officer from the Hudson Valley.

The ending ruined an otherwise good book.
The book kept me interested right up until things came together at the end.
It wasn't remotely believable. If it had been tweaked just a bit, it would have had a better chance at success. One of the characters reminded me of Norman Bates (from Psycho), but really didn't need the other character to achieve the purpose. That was a shame.
I'll read more titles with Joe Trumbull as a main character. I just hope that more of the silly fat is trimmed before release.

Better Title than Read
Such a bad book, I left it at the airport hoping someone would think it was a great find. That wasn't nice. I should have put it in the trash.

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