Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton

I really should have read this series in order, I can see that now. I started in the middle with North of Nowhere and then picked up Misery Bay. Apparently something significant happened to the main character, retired Detroit cop Alex McKnight (now living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula)in one of the books between this one and that one. But I'm having to guess what it was. Oh well, back to the library. Anyway, this is an absorbing tale that starts with the suicide of the son of the former partner of Alex's sometime nemesis, Chief Maven. The distraught father hires Alex to find out what drove his son to suicide--and Alex uncovers a lot more than he bargained for--including a series of other possibly related deaths. Hamilton tells a good story and he has a good sense of life in far northern Michigan, where the snowfall is measured in feet not inches, a cell phone signal is always an iffy proposition, and where you can drive for miles without running into another living soul.