Every Day Above Ground: A Van Shaw Novel

Hamilton’s outstanding third Van Shaw novel (after 2016’s Hard Cold Winter) fulfills the promise of the earlier entries. Shaw, a former Army ranger, is trying to stay on the right side of the law as he struggles to make ends meet with whatever part-time work he can get. He hopes that he can manage to rebuild the Seattle home he recently inherited from his thief grandfather, Donovan “Dono” Shaw, so when Mickey O’Hasson, an old criminal colleague of Dono’s, offers him a part of a score, Shaw is naturally tempted. Mickey has just been released from prison, where he met an inmate who claimed to have worked for Karl Ekby, the most powerful heroin dealer in L.A., and invested his proceeds in gold, which he stored in a safe in the floor of his Seattle office. Shaw agrees to help Mickey break into the safe, but the burglary goes south, leaving Shaw scrambling to find out why they were apparently set up. The suspenseful, fast-moving plot is a good match for the empathetic, nuanced lead. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency. (July)