Vermilion Drift (Cork O’Connor, 10) William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN:  9781439153871) 2011.

Summary: The discovery of six bodies in an underground iron mine leads to facing uncomfortable truths about Cork’s father.

Cork O’Connor comes home to an empty house every night. His children are away for the summer. And he has nightmares. In them he sees his father falling, crying for his help. Then, stepping out of himself, he sees the same scene again–only he is pushing his father. He cannot make sense of it.

But in the daylight, his life is bustling. Sam’s Place is thriving under the manager who would like to buy the place. He has rich consulting clients, including an iron mine owner, Max Cavanaugh. He’s helping with security arrangements while an old mine is under consideration as a nuclear waste storage site. There are protests. Then several people receive threatening messages: “We die. you die.” Max has also asked him to investigate the disappearance of his sister Lauren, who ran an arts center out of the old Judge Parrant mansion.

When the same message appears inside the mine, Cork investigates whether there was another access to the mine. He discovers that one of the side tunnels, the Vermilion Drift (drift being the term for such tunnels) ran under the reservation of the tribal lands and that there was an exit that had been blocked up. But he discovers something else. Six bodies, including one recently murdered.

The recently murdered person turns out to be Lauren Cavanaugh. Four other bodies were of young girls who had disappeared from tribal lands during “the Vanishings.” These occurred fifty years ago. The other body is that of Max’s mother, from the same time. Cork’s father had been sheriff then and Cork a rebellious teen. If all this isn’t weird enough, both women were killed by the same gun, a .38 revolver. That catches Cork’s attention. His father used a .38, which Cork inherited, until he turned it over to Henry Meloux for safekeeping after a school shooting. When he looks in the place Henry concealed it, it is gone.

Cork begins to wonder what his father’s role was in all this. He had been investigating the Vanishings the summer before his death in a shootout arising from a bank holdup. Cork remembers something was different about his father. But there is much from that time he doesn’t remember. All he remembers is being at his father’s deathbed, listening to his mother’s prayers, unable to join her.

As the official investigation of the murders past and present go on, Cork cooperates, but doesn’t share the part about his father. Rather, he pursues a search that uncovers both unspeakable evil, and the possibility that his father had some part in this. Amid all this, Cork realizes that his own missing memories and his nightmares are important, but could also reveal truths that could shatter the image of his father.

Krueger combines a murder mystery with plot twists and red herrings with an inner journey that tests Cork’s resolve to know the truth. Henry Meloux, growing increasingly frail, both holds and withholds the key, waiting for Cork to come to the place beyond anger when he is ready. It’s not clear whether Cork will reach this place or whether it could cost him his relationship with Henry. All that makes you keep turning the pages in another finely written installment in this series.

Heaven’;s Keep, (Cork O’Connor, 9), William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781416556770) 2010.

Summary: The charter plane Jo is in in goes down in a snowstorm in Wyoming and is not found. Subsequent evidence offers hope.

Cork O’Connor is in a legal fight to keep Sam’s Place. A developer, Hugh Parmer, has visions of a luxury lakeside development and needs Cork’s land, leading to a tense confrontation and mounting legal bills. Cork even turns to applying for a deputy position in his former department to supplement his income. Jo is not happy. She is headed out the door to a conference out west of tribal elders developing gambling policies. They don’t kiss goodbye, something they’ve never failed to do.

The final leg of the flight is on a charter over rugged territory in Wyoming. A winter storm is closing in. But the pilot boasts of being able to get through. Less than an hour in, there is a jolt, then another, and the plane begins to rapidly descend. The pilot sends a mayday message. The plane goes off radar, missing without a trace in the middle of a blizzard. It is days before they can begin a search in the bitter cold…

Cork gathers the family and they live the pendulum swing between despair and hope that somehow, Jo and the others, including George LeDuc survived. Then Hugh Parmer shows up, but not to continue the property dispute. He sets all that aside and offers Cork any help he needs out of his considerable resources. When the weather in Wyoming lifts, Cork asks if he will fly him out to join the search. Or rather him and Stephen, who has had a vision. Cork recognizes that Stephen also needs to know they’ve done everything to find Jo.

And they do, including a very risky search on a hard to reach frozen lake, suggested by another vision of a local Arapaho. But they find no trace of the plane. Given the conditions, they have to conclude Jo and the others are dead. Back in Aurora, they hold a memorial for her at a gravesite without remains. They grieve and try to put life together without Jo. Eventually, Cork and Hugh Parmer get together without lawyers and work out a very different plan for the development. They protect the waterfront, and Sam’s. They join together in a grand opening and are about to celebrate together when two women ask to speak to Cork.

One is the wife of the pilot, who is being sued. The other is her lawyer, He was accused of drinking heavily the night before the flight. It’s all on a videotape they want Cork to see. There are small things, but they all add up. The man is not her husband. When Cork studies the video, he notices something else–the man fakes drinking, pouring it down his shirt. They want Cork to investigate. But one of the problems is they’d already hired an investigator, who has gone missing.

Cork realizes that Jo’s disappearance may not be due to a simple plane crash in a storm. Hugh realizes how important this is and offers his help. They visit the pilot’s hangar and find evidence that he was dead before the plane took off. They realize the answers are in Wyoming. But before they get there, they have a near fatal “accident,” clearly very carefully planned. Someone doesn’t want them to learn the truth, and heading to Wyoming is heading into greater danger. But what they’ve found also raises the possibility that the plane may not have crashed. Jo may still be alive.

While Stephen stays with Henry Meloux to undergo a vision quest, key to transitioning to Ojibwe manhood, Cork and Hugh fly to Wyoming. Surprisingly, Hugh quickly proves his worth. But will it be enough against the opposition they face? Will they find the answers they seek? Will the answers relate in any way to the visions?

The introduction of Hugh Parmer feels like he might become an ongoing character. I hope so (if they survive this book!). Cork and Hugh are good together. I also love how Stephen (no longer Stevie) is developed. He has always been courageous, but there are depths emerging. I look forward to how this young man will grow up. But running through it all are two people whose last words before they parted were conflict…and silence.

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.

Thunder Bay (Cork O’Connor Number 7), William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781439157824) 2009

Summary: A search for Henry Meloux’s son leads to an attempt on Meloux’s life and a love story from the 1920’s.

This is a novel where Cork O’Connor learns things about people close to him that he had not known before. For one, that his studious, college-bound daughter, Jenny, is pregnant. And he learns that his wise advisor, Henry Meloux, has a son.

The latter revelation comes to light when Henry suddenly is afflicted with a heart condition, threatening his life. But the doctors can’t find a problem. When he tells Cork about his son and wanting to find him and Cork agrees to search, he suddenly gets better. Cork tracks him down to Thunder Bay, Canada, and tries to see him, using a watch with a picture of his son’s mother Henry gave him, as an entree.

There’s a problem. Henry’s son is a hermit, living on an island. But Cork makes a convincing case to be seen with his half-brother who had taken over the profitable mining business Henry’s son had formerly presided over. He gets the meeting, but not without a dustup with Hank’s bodyguard, Morrissey. And Henry’s son does not want to see his father.

Cork returns and assumes its all over and turns to deal with Jenny’s situation together with Jo. Until, that is, someone makes an attempt on Henry’s life, which costs the assailant his life. The assailant was Morrissey.

Why would someone try to kill Henry for wanting to see his long lost son? Cork, although no longer sheriff, wants to understand. He assumes Henry is still in danger. So Henry tells him the story, one that runs for 85 pages of the novel. As a young man, Henry had agreed to serve as a guide for a couple of prospectors, one of whom brought along his beautiful daughter. They fall in love beside a scenic lake in the north woods in Canada. They meet a Black man, Maurice, living in the woods who they befriend. He has a huge stash of gold, what the prospectors were seeking.

Sadly, the love affair between Henry and the girl is discovered. In a confrontation with her father, the father is fatally hurt. Things end badly, with Henry wounded and Maurice dead. Somehow, Henry survives and walks out of the wilderness, discovering his calling as a spiritual guide. The girl, Maria is pregnant, and marries the surviving prospector, Wellington, naming her son Henry. She dies a few years later and Wellington remarries and has another son, the half-brother running the company.

Despite the threat on his life, Henry wants to go to his son. Cork agrees and they take retired sheriff, Wally Schanno with them as backup. They discover the “hermit” is a front and locate where the real Henry is living. But murder pursues as well. Why the attempt to kill an old man? And will Henry see his son?

Obviously, the big feature of this novel is the development of the Meloux character, with an explanation of how he became a mide. And we also learn how Stevie gets a dog and what happens to Jenny. In it all, Krueger portrays the bittersweetness of life — of love and wonder and violence and loss — and that we must hold onto the former to sustain us when facing the latter.