William Kent Krueger

Review: Blood Hollow

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Cover image of "Blood Hollow" by William Kent Krueger

Blood Hollow (Cork O’Connor Number Four), William Kent Krueger. Atria Paperback (ISBN: 9781439157794), 2009.

Summary: A murder is pinned on Solemn Winter Moon, but Cork thinks otherwise, confronting resistance and wounds from the past.

Fletcher Kane’s daughter Charlotte is missing after taking off on a snowmobile during a New Year’s Eve party. Aurora turns out to search but no trace. Cork persists as a blizzard approaches. Crossing a lake, he falls off his snowmobile and can’t find it. Then a wraith-like something guides him and he finds the snowmobile and makes it to shore.

Four months later, some hikers come across her body. Evidence at the scene, including a beer bottle and a wrench used to murder the girl, connects back to Solemn Winter Moon, nephew of Sam, whose hamburger place Cork and his daughters run since Sam’s tragic death. Chillingly, the murderer ate and drank while waiting for Charlotte to die. Sheriff Arne Soderberg, a political climber, is shaken to confront such a murder, but he is sure Moon has done it. But Moon is nowhere to be found. Cork finds him at Sam’s cabin hideaway and he and Jo persuade him to turn himself in. But when the sheriff ambushes him with the evidence, he bolts.

None of this looks good for Moon, who has been in and out of trouble since his youth. It turns out he fled to Henry Meloux, a sage who has guided Cork many times. Solemn returns from a vision quest as Cork goes to Henry and tells a strange story. He saw and talked to Jesus, dressed in north woods gear. Understandably, Cork has no idea what to think. But something has transformed Solemn. He is ready to face arrest and whatever follows.

But he is not the only one who faces a hard road. Solemn asks Jo to represent him. In turn, she needs a good investigator, and who better than Cork. But Cork faces challenges from his past. Fletcher Kane, Charlotte’s father is one. Fletcher’s father committed suicide when Cork’s father investigated sexual irregularities with one of his patients. And Charlotte’s school counselor intimates that Charlotte showed signs of sexual abuse by a family member. No love lost there. And then Arne Soderberg isn’t happy with the former sheriff investigating his case.

Solemn, who had broken up with Charlotte disavows the murder, or the sex that had preceded it. Slowly, evidence accumulates to point to someone else in this tight knit community, someone people would never think capable of murder. Cork must suspect people who are friends…or not, like someone wearing the badge.

Cork revisits two decisions in his life. When turned out of office after Sam Moon’s death, he made his peace with running Sam’s business with Jen and Anne. But the search for Charlotte’s murderer calls out all in which Cork excels as a lawman. And Solemn’s claims to have talked to Jesus and subsequent events challenge him to reconsider the faith he had turned from. Can he believe again?

In addition to Charlotte’s death, which has more twists than I can reveal here, Krueger develops the slowly healing relationship between Cork and Jo and the evolving relationship he has with two teenage daughters and his son. His connection with Henry Meloux is a high point in every story. And there is a subplot with Rose, pointing to the development her character. This makes me want to read further, not only for thrilling mysteries but also growing characters and evolving relationships.

Review: Purgatory Ridge

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Cover image of "Purgatory Ridge" by William Kent Krueger.

Purgatory Ridge (Cork O’Connor #3), William Kent Krueger. Pocket Books (ISBN: 9780671047542), 2002.

Summary: A murder investigation becomes far more when a kidnapping plot involves Cork’s own family as well as that of a prominent mill owner.

Slowly, the wounds of the past are healing. Cork O’Connor is back at home with Jo. He’s enjoying slinging burgers with his kids at Sam’s. Then an explosion changes everything in a moment. The explosion at Karl Lindstrom’s mill not only caused extensive damage. It took a life of a tribal elder, Charlie Warren. And the sheriff asks Cork to assist with the investigation because he is part Anishinaabe. Also, the sheriff is not running for office again. There are many, including the sheriff, who are encouraging Cork to run again.

Lindstrom’s mill is at the center of controversy. He’s wants to log a sacred stand of white pines. Not only the tribe is protesting. So is a figure known as the “Eco-Warrior” as well as a mother and son team, which could be one and the same. Attention focuses on them. As Cork is drawn into the investigation, tension arises with Jo, who fears what will happen if Cork becomes sheriff.

Meanwhile, across the lake from Lindstrom’s grand home, John La Pere nurses a grievance. Fourteen years earlier, he took his brother Billy on the final voyage of a lake freighter before it was to be decommissioned. Storms hit Superior that night and the freighter broke up. Only John survived of all on board. He suspects the breakup wasn’t due to the storm. What makes matters worse is that Lindstrom’s wife Grace is the daughter of the freighter owner.

He teams up with Wes Bridger, a gambler at the casino with some special skills, locating the freighter only to have their efforts sabotaged. He agrees to a plot Bridger has proposed that will give him the money to investigate the sinking and get the evidence against the company. While Cork is protecting Lindstrom at a speaking event, Bridger and La Pere kidnap Grace and her son. There’s one complication. Grace had invited Jo O’Connor and her son Stevie for a confidential conversation. The kidnappers take them as well.

Krueger has given us another page-turning thriller as Cork and Lindstrom, along with law enforcement try to rescue their families. Meanwhile, the women and their sons are doing what they can to survive and escape. Jo’s sister Rose exercises a faithful presence that steadies the family. She believes in God when Cork and Jo cannot. Henry Meloux offers insight that enables Cork to step back and get perspective. We also get intimations that young Stevie will someday be a force to reckon with. When Karl Lindstrom cannot raise the ransom, the casino owner, a tribal member offers him a no interest loan. Krueger weaves the fabric of a moral universe deeper and richer than treacherous actors. He draws characters for whom we care deeply as well as evil actors, and one tragic figure. This novel has all the elements just right.

Review: Boundary Waters

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Cover image of "Boundary Waters" by William Kent Krueger

Boundary Waters (Cork O’Connor #2), William Kent Krueger. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9780671016999), 2000 (link is to a different edition in print).

Summary: A young country-western singer hiding in seclusion in a Boundary Waters cabin is pursued by a man claiming to be her father, FBI agents, a father and son from an organized crime family–and a couple of cold-blooded killers for hire.

Cork O’Connor is living in Sam’s old house, running Sam’s burger concession. His girls help in the summer but he and Jo remain apart. Unbeknown to him, a country-western singer, Shilohm, whose mother and Cork had been friends has used an Anishinaabe guide to hide away in a remote cabin in the Boundary Waters to seek clarity about her life.

A man known as Arkansas Willie Ray, who raised her and helped her build Ozark Records, shows up and hires Cork to help find her. She had been communicating and all communication had stopped. Then the FBI shows up at Sheriff Schanno’s office, also searching for her. They use strong arm tactics to compel Cork to help them along with Stormy Two Knives and his ten-year old son Louis, whose uncle, Wendell Two Knives had taken him when he brought supplies to Shiloh. Louis is the only one with any idea where she is.

They set out on a journey into the Boundary Waters as the weather transitions from fall to winter. Meanwhile, back in town, another “father” arrives, an aging organized crime boss and his son, also wanting to find her. Meanwhile, the search party doesn’t realize two other ruthless hired killers are also hunting for Shiloh. Already, they have tortured and killed Wendell Two Knives, without extracting any information. They also don’t know that Shiloh, tired of waiting for Wendell, has started back, using a map Wendell gave her. Something else is following Shiloh–a mysterious wolf who doesn’t attack.

While Cork and his party hunt Shiloh and realize they are also being hunted, Jo and the Sheriff figure out that all is not as it seems with the party that went out. Danger may not only be stalking Cork and the others but traveling with them. All this makes for a page-turning account where we wonder whether anyone but the killers will come out alive.

Meanwhile Jo struggles to believe with the support of her sister Rose, that all will come right, even as bodies are found (but not Cork). One senses that though their relationship was badly damaged, there is love that remains, to be explored if Cork survives. All this, along with Krueger’s well-drawn descriptions of the wilderness, make for a novel rich in its character relationships, setting, and thrilling plot.