Red Knife (Cork O’Connor Number 8), William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781416556749), 2008.

Summary: Cork O’Connor is asked to help end a series of apparent revenge killings threatening a war between the Ojibwe and Tamarack County.

Buck Reinhardt’s daughter is dead from a drug overdose. He believes Lonnie Thunder, one of a group of young Ojibwe men, the Red Boyz, is responsible. And he wants revenge. The leader of the Red Boyz, Alex Kingbird, seeks out Cork O’;Connor in his role as private investigator to arrange a meeting with Reinhardt, promising him justice. Before the meeting can happen, someone brutally murders Kingbird and his wife.

Cork and Sheriff Marsha Dross want to find the killer before things escalate into an all-out blood feud. The lead suspects are Reinhardt and Lonnie Thunder–until a sniper’s bullet ends Reinhardt’s life. And Cork cannot find Thunder.

The tribal council hires Cork to bring an end to the killing. In the process, he discovers an evil beyond the Red Boyz and the townspeople. It will force him to choose between his commitment to law enforcement and loyalty to his Ojibwe heritage. Meanwhile, his daughter Anne will face her own struggle as she seeks to be a true friend to Uly Kingbird, the brother of Alex, and a suspect in Reinhardt’s death

The prologue describes a massacre that occurs in a clearing that will be called Miskwaamookomaan or Red Knife. Two hundred years later, that clearing became the site of a school. You will forget it as it seems irrelevant to the subsequent plot. I did, only to encounter one of the most chilling plot turns in Krueger’s series so far.