Review: "Vermilion Drift," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

The iron ranges around Lake Superior did not figure prominently in William Kent Krueger's earliest Cork O'Connor crime novels, which feature a protagonist who is a county sheriff turned private investigator in rural Aurora, Minnesota. But an old iron mine is front and center in Vermilion Drift, the 10th novel in the lengthy O'Connor series.

It's 2010 or thereabouts. Wealthy mine owner Max Cavanaugh hires O’Connor to track down his beautiful, intelligent and narcissistic sister, Lauren, who runs a local retreat for artists but has recently disappeared. O’Connor’s tasks multiply when Cavanaugh, a mining company official named Lou Haddad, and consultant Eugenia Kufus all receive anonymous written threats.

The notes seem designed to torpedo a tentative government plan to bury nuclear waste in the mine. It’s that plan that Kufus is researching, as she tries to determine whether the mine is stable enough to handle the waste.

All three identical notes contain a single curt message: We die. U die. Later, Haddad finds the same warning painted on a wall in the mine. Haddad insists, persuasively, that the message could not have been painted by anyone who was authorized to be in the mine, which supposedly has only one way in and out.

That claim — that there is a carefully controlled single access point to the mine — proves to be incorrect. Someone found a secret entryway, and used it to create a sealed chamber of horrors in a tunnel.

Removing that subterranean room’s wall to gain access, O’Connor finds six human bodies, five of which are nothing more than skeletal remains. The sixth body has not been there long enough to become skeletal, although decomposition is well underway.

All of the bodies are female, and four of them turn out to be Indigenous. That suggests a connection to the unexplained disappearances of several Ojibwe women and girls back in the mid 1960s, a mystery that came to be known in Aurora as The Vanishings.

The other two murder victims are Cavanaugh’s mother and sister. Both were shot with the same revolver, a gun that O’Connor inherited from his father, who died when O'Connor was still a boy. O'Connor has not had the weapon for years, having given it to Henry Meloux, an aged Indigenous man, for safekeeping. The revolver has disappeared from Meloux’s hiding place, however, and its whereabouts are unknown as the police investigation of the murders continues.

It testifies to Krueger’s skill as a writer that O’Connor, whose heritage is a mix of Irish and Ojibwe (aka, Chippewa) is such a well-rounded character. A widower whose three children are out of town for the time being, he is trying to come to terms with his altered lifestyle while helping local and state officials with the murder cases.

Sifting through his deceased mother's journals, O'Connor finds vague clues that may link his father, Liam, to The Vanishings in some unexplained way. (Liam was the county sheriff when The Vanishings occurred.) Lonely and troubled, O’Connor is dogged by persistent nightmares in which he pushes his father to his death. (In fact, the senior O’Connor was gunned down during a crime spree, while trying to protect an elderly woman who had stumbled into the line of fire.)

Krueger is not a writer of cozy mysteries, and the crimes that preceded most of the six mine murders are particularly gruesome. But Krueger describes them obliquely, making the disclosures a bit more bearable for the reader than they would be if the author had played them up for shock value.

There are so many twists in Vermilion Drift that answers to some of the most important secrets remain elusive until the final chapters. As with every puzzle in this dark and cleverly plotted novel, the late revelations are well worth the wait.

Review: "Heaven's Keep," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

The early novels in William Kent Krueger’s crime series repeatedly remind readers that county sheriff turned private investigator Cork O’Connor, the protagonist, is a lucky man blessed with a loving family.

In addition to two daughters and a son, the lineup includes his devoted but independent-minded wife Jo, a lawyer who often represents Indigenous Ojibwe (aka, Chippewa) people in fictional Aurora, Minnesota, where the O’Connor clan lives.

But in Heaven’s Keep, the ninth novel in the series, the family suffers a devastating shock when a plane carrying Jo on a business trip to Seattle disappears while flying over mountainous terrain in Wyoming.

An intensive search does not turn up any trace of the charter flight, leading Cork and his children to assume, to their horror, that Jo and the other passengers on board died in a crash during a heavy snow storm.

Months pass as the O'Connor family tries to come to terms with the loss of a wife and mother. But Jo’s disappearance takes on a new aspect when two women show up in Aurora claiming that the pilot of the missing plan was not who he claimed to be.

Becca Bodine, whose husband was originally thought to have been flying the plane, says the man at the controls during that flight was not plane owner Clinton Bodine, who has disappeared. Also missing: a private investigator whom Becca hired to figure out what happened on that flight.

At the request of the missing pilot’s wife and her lawyer, Cork agrees to conduct an investigation of his own. Questions abound. Why did an imposter take to the skies with Jo and other passengers on board, and who was he? What, if anything, will that mysterious turn of events reveal about Jo’s fate? And what became of Clinton Bodine, the scheduled pilot, and Steve Stilwell, the private investigator who had been on the case until he too went missing?

Heaven’s Keep is by far the most harrowing of the first nine novels in Krueger’s long-running series (22 books so far), both because of Jo’s presumed death and the startling developments that follow the plane’s disappearance.

The novel tells a dark, nail-biting tale, and the final chapters carry the reader along at an almost cinematic pace. The contrast between good and evil is stark, but not always immediately clear, building suspense as the story unfolds.

Despite his initial belief that Jo and the other passengers died when their plane went down, subsequent events lead Cork to hope, however tentatively, that his wife may be alive. Is that even a remote possibility under the circumstances, or merely the wishful thinking of a distraught husband?

As with the previous novels in this series, Heaven’s Keep features strong Indigenous elements. Cork is of mixed Irish and Ojibwe descent. The Ojibwe of Minnesota and the Arapaho of Wyoming figure prominently in the novel.

Full-blooded and mixed race Indigenous characters, including Cork’s 13-year-old son Stephen, have visions that may be central to the plot. In fact, after Stephen has a vision that he believes provides a clue to his mother's whereabouts, the boy goes on a solitary woodland vision quest, or rite of passage, under the tutelage of Henry Meloux, an elderly Ojibwe healer who is Cork’s best friend and a recurring character in the series.

Review: "Red Knife," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

As the eighth novel in William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor series opens, Cork, the former sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnestota, is leading a quiet life in rural Aurora, the county seat and his home town. He runs a seasonal, lakeside burger joint and tackles occasional low-key jobs as a private investigator.

But that changes when someone, possibly a disgruntled Ojibwe man from a local reservation, starts shooting at O’Connor and his 10-year-old son.

Neither is harmed in the attack, which appears to be more of a warning than anything else. But the shooting prompts Cork to inject himself into a double murder case that is under investigation by the sheriff’s office and a state agent. Cork makes it his mission to find a possible suspect who has disappeared.

The case centers on the deaths of Alexander and Rayette Kingbird, an indigenous couple gunned down outside their home while their infant daughter slept inside. Alexander Kingbird was the leader of a local indigenous group calling itself the Red Boyz, whose members include a young man named Lonnie Thunder.

Thunder may have killed the Kingbirds to prevent Alexander, a foe of local drug dealing, from turning him in to the sheriff for supplying drugs to Kristi Reinhardt, a young woman who fell or jumped to her death while under the influence of Thunder’s wares.

There’s more than one suspect in the case, however. And, eventually, more than two murders to investigate.

Kristi’s father, Buck Reinhardt, an obnoxious local businessman, believes Alexander Kingbird was indirectly responsible for his daughter’s death, giving Reinhardt a possible motive for killing Kingbird and his wife.

Moreover, a California-based drug gang has upset many Ojibwe by using a warehouse on the reservation near Aurora to distribute drugs in the Midwest. Did tensions between the gang and angry tribal members prompt the West-Coast drug lords to silence the Kingbirds?

When Buck Reinhardt is gunned down by an unknown assailant, new questions arise. Alexander Kingbird’s father confesses to Buck's murder, but did he do it? His wife suspects he’s taking the blame to protect someone else. And then there’s Alexander’s brother, Ulysses, who has made off with a rifle from his father’s workshop, making him a possible suspect in Buck’s death as well.

As the body count grows, leaders of the local Ojibwe band decide to shut down the drug warehouse on the reservation, despite the ruthlessness of the California dealers who visit the reservation periodically and are sure to resent this turn of events.

Red Knife is the eighth of 21 novels in Kruger’s O’Connor series. Those eight books, at least, blend Cork’s solid investigative work with his closest personal relationships.

Cork’s longtime friendship with Henry Meloux, a wise and aged Ojibwe, is always on display, to one degree or another. Even more importantly, Cork’s devotion to his family —wife Jo and their three children — is a central element in the novels.

The oldest of Cork’s two daughters doesn’t figure in Red Knife because she’s away at college, but his younger daughter, Annie, a high-school senior, and still younger son, Stevie, make multiple appearances. No spoilers here, but it’s worth noting that Red Knife builds to a shattering climax that takes a toll on Cork’s clan, and in particular on one member of his family.

Review: "Thunder Bay," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

Henry Meloux, a laconic 90-year-old Ojibwe Indian, serves as a healer -- some might say a medicine man -- for the Indigenous people of Aurora, Minnesota. He is a fascinating but relatively minor character in William Kent Krueger's early Cork O'Connor mysteries, which feature O'Connor as the on-again, off-again sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota.

Meloux may well be O'Connor's best friend, and in Thunder Bay, the seventh novel in the series, the never-married Ojibwe finally moves front and center. Meloux is a man with a secret so momentous that it threatens his life, forces him to kill a man in self-defense and sends O’Connor to Ontario, Canada, not once but twice as he tries to fulfill Meloux’s greatest wish.

Meloux claims to have fathered a son some 70 years ago, a son whom he has never met and whose name he does not even know. Identifying the mother as a woman named Maria Lima, Meloux asks— demands, really — that O’Connor not only find his son but bring him to Meloux’s home, so the two can meet at long last.

Thanks to some digging, O’Connor determines that Meloux’s son is Henry Wellington, a retired and notoriously reclusive industrialist living a hermit’s life on an island off Thunder Bay, a city in Ontario, Canada. O’Connor also learns that Lima was the first wife of Leonard Wellington, Henry Wellington’s purported father.

Armed with Meloux’s pocket watch, which contains a photo of Lima, O’Connor heads to Thunder Bay and snags a brief meeting at Henry Wellington's island mansion. To Connor's dismay, the man whom Meloux believes to be his son is a seemingly demented racist and germophobe who refuses to believe that Meloux is his father and angrily orders a servant to evict O”Connor.

The servant, Edward Morrissey, later turns up at Meloux’s cabin in Minnesota, intending to murder the old man. But Meloux guns down his would-be killer, triggering a cross-border investigation as the sheriff’s office in Aurora, Minnesota, tries to figure out why Morrissey targeted Meloux.

Was Morrissey after the elderly man’s gold pocket watch because of its monetary value? Was he under orders from his boss to knock off Meloux and seize Lima’s photo, perhaps to destroy any suggestion that Henry Wellington’s father was, as Wellington put it when he met O’Connor, an “Indian buck”?

Meloux was a thinly sketched fellow in the previous novels. But all that changes this time around as readers learn his origin story, including how he fell in love with Lima some 70 years ago when they found themselves in an Ontario wilderness.

Their love affair, and Krueger’s portrayal of Meloux as a young man, will delight readers who've worked their way through the previous novels in the series. Meloux finally emerges as a fully developed character who is all the more compelling as a result.

The plot takes several shocking turns when Meloux, O’Connor and one of O’Connor’s pals head to Thunder Bay for what they hope will be Meloux’s long-awaited meeting with his son. It proves to be a dangerous mission full of twists that will leave readers racing to discover what the next page will bring.

Krueger tugs at the heartstrings by weaving a very moving subplot into Thunder Bay involving an unrelated family crisis that strikes O’Connor, his wife Jo and their three children. Novels come and go, creating short-lived memories or, sometimes, lasting impressions. Thunder Bay definitely falls into the latter category.

Review: "Copper River," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor, the sheriff of Minnesota’s (fictional) Tamarack County, is a take-charge kind of guy who normally finds himself in firm control of whatever situation he encounters.

But not this time out.

In Copper River, the sixth entry in William Kent Krueger’s acclaimed mystery series,  Cork  is shot in the leg by a hit man whose employer  believes — wrongly — that Cork murdered one of his sons. Fearing for his safety and that of his family, Cork hides out at his cousin Jewell DuBois’ aging resort on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 

But his recovery is far from restful. When Jewell’s teenage son Ren (short for Renoir) and Ren's friend Charlene (aka, Charlie) go searching for a body their pal Stash claims to have seen in the Copper River, a boat docks nearby. Its occupants try to capture the two teenagers, who narrowly escape.

Crises mount. Charlie’s father, a notorious drunk, is brutally murdered in the home he shared with his daughter, possibly by the unidentified men from the boat. Did they kill him because he refused to tell them where they could find Charlie?

Later still, the corpse of a teenage girl washes ashore on a lake that is fed by the Copper River. Meanwhile, Stash is badly injured in a hit-and-run. Ren believes the driver deliberately plowed into Stash in a case of mistaken identity, thinking Stash was Ren.

Cork suspects that the boaters murdered the girl whose body Ren and Charlie were searching for, and the men are now determined to silence the two inquisitive teenagers. That may be why they demanded that Charlie’s father reveal her whereabouts, and why one of them ran down Stash.

All of which points to fowl play rather than accidental death. Cork and his friend Dina, a worldly-wise private investigator, swing into action, despite Cork’s injury.

Krueger tosses a lot of irons into the fire, making for an engrossing page-turner.

Cork’s would-be killer (or killers?) continues to pursue his prey in hopes of collecting a $500,000 bounty. Thanks largely to Cork’s somewhat reckless exertions since the shooting, his wound keeps reopening, soaking his leg in blood from time to time. And if all that isn’t enough, intriguing tracks — both human and cougar — turn up outside Jewell’s collection of cabins.

Krueger’s canvas is expansive, with a varied cast of characters. Cork’s family is off-stage back in Minnesota, but Dina, who figured prominently in the previous novel, plays a central role in Copper River as well. The embittered Jewell and the teens Ren and Charlie are well fleshed out.

The investigation of the deaths plays out against a backdrop of scenic natural settings, a credible examination of the turmoils of teen life, and an exploration of the grief and pain that plague Jewell following the death of her husband. There also are periodic references to Indigenous people, with Ojibwe vocabulary and beliefs cropping up from time to time.

Not surprisingly, given Krueger’s success and popularity, Copper River’s plot never lags. The author moves the story along at a brisk pace. The novel is more grim than earlier entries in the series, but it is compelling and memorable.

 

Copper River provides twists and turns aplenty. (That cougar, wounded and famished, shows up again at a critical juncture.) Readers probably will be glued to the page straight through to the harrowing but satisfying conclusion of Copper River.

Review: "Mercy Falls," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

William Kent Krueger has created a winning formula with his mystery series starring Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor, the on-again off-again sheriff of rural (and fictional) Tamarack County in northern Minnesota. There are over 20 novels in the series — or will be with the publication of the 21st book this September.

A former Chicago cop who returned to his Minnesota roots by settling in his hometown of Aurora, Cork wears a sheriff’s badge once again in the fifth novel, following a forced exile that, for a time, left him running a lakeside burger joint near his home.

In Mercy Falls, the sheriff and a female deputy head out to investigate a possible domestic dispute. When they arrive at the home of Lucy Tibodeau, who supposedly made the call, Deputy Marsha Dross is shot and seriously wounded as she steps out from behind the wheel. The cabin, meanwhile, is empty.

The shot was fired from some distance, and Cork is convinced he was the intended target; Cork reasons that the shooter probably assumed the sheriff would be driving the cruiser. Lucy, upon returning home, denies having placed the call to the sheriff’s office. Someone impersonated her on the phone to lure Cork to the cabin.

Krueger has created a complex and believable world in the O’Connor novels, both in terms of the people who populate Tamarack County and the setting. In fact, the region itself is a central character. Cork’s turf is located near an actual wilderness area known as the Boundary Waters, a massive expanse west of Lake Superior that covers portions of northern Minnesota and southern Ontario.

Although Tamarack County is rural, it is not exclusively white. Indigenous Anishinaabe people live there too, notably Ojibwe (aka, Chippewa) who have a reservation and play a prominent role, at least in the early novels. The shooting of Dross occurred on the reservation. And a subsequent murder claims the life of Eddie Jacoby who, before he was stabbed to death, had been trying to persuade the Ojibwe to hire his management firm to run their casino.

Cork pulls together a solid team to investigate the shooting and the fatal stabbing, but even as progress is being made, key questions remain. It turns out the shooter who injured the sheriff’s deputy was a hired gun. And when a seemingly credible suspect in Jacoby’s murder has to be ruled out, it’s back to square one in that case.

Despite the time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous, demands  of his job, Cork is a devoted family man, and his wife and three children provide a valuable counterpoint to the ongoing investigations.

Cork’s wife, Jo, is an attorney, and she and Cork both have ties to the Ojibwe, either professionally or personally. Jo often represents the local band of the tribe. As for Cork, he’s part Ojibwe, thanks to a grandmother who was a full-blooded tribal member. To an extent, that leaves him torn between two worlds. “When people are pissed at me,” Cork says, “I’m not Ojibwe enough for the Ojibwes, and not white enough for the whites.”

As the criminal investigations continue, Jo’s life — and Cork’s too — suddenly become more complicated when Ben Jacoby, the murder victim’s brother, arrives in Aurora following his brother’s death. Long before Jo met Cork, she and Ben were lovers as law school students.

Krueger packs plenty of action into Mercy Falls. As if one shooting and one murder aren't enough, a second murder occurs. Even when it eventually becomes clear who committed all three crimes, Cork’s life remains in jeopardy when an old, vengeful and misguided man blessed with great wealth but no sense puts a $500,000 bounty on Cork’s head. There's no denying that Krueger knows how to keep readers turning the pages.

Review: "Blood Hollow," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

In this fourth installment in William Kent Krueger’s long-running mystery series (20 novels since 1998), Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota, joins forces with his wife Jo, an attorney, in championing a young Indigenous man accused of murdering a high school student.

The O’Connors are convinced that Solemn Winter Moon, the supposed killer of Charlotte Kane, is innocent. But the arrogant new sheriff, Arne Soderberg, who sees his job as nothing more than a stepping stone to the state Legislature, believes otherwise.

Although the young Ojibwe maintains his innocence, the circumstantial evidence against him is damning.

Charlotte and Solemn had been dating until she broke it off. The duo later argued at a New Year’s Eve party, shortly before Charlotte’s death. A moody charmer with a troubled past, Solemn had motive and opportunity. His wrench was the murder weapon. And he has no alibi. He even disappeared (for a time) after his former girlfriend’s murder.

Krueger’s novels are atmospheric, with compelling, three-dimensional characters who live (and sometimes die) in the rural borderlands of northern Minnesota. Blood Hollow is no exception. Certain motifs recur in the series, but they are welcome touchstones, not hackneyed staples.

For example, Cork is fiercely devoted to his family (Jo, two daughters, a young son and Jo’s live-in sister). He loves the deep woods of rural Minnesota, musing that they hold a spirit “so huge it humbled the human heart.” And he has strong ties to the local Ojibwe (aka, the Chippewa), thanks to the fact that Cork is one quarter Ojibwe himself, through one of his grandmothers.

Indigenous characters play recurring roles in Blood Hollow. In addition to Solemn Winter Moon they include Henry Meloux, a wise elder who provides guidance to Cork. Krueger, who periodically drops Ojibwe words and concepts into his novels, has written previously that he tries to capture the “courage and integrity” of the Anishinaabeg, an umbrella group of various Indigenous peoples, including the Ojibwe.

Initially, the investigation seems straightforward enough, at least to the sheriff’s department, which immediately settled on Solemn as the killer. But Krueger keeps readers guessing by introducing other possible suspects. The plot eventually becomes cloaked in a web of deception, manipulation and ambiguity.

Was Charlotte really Charlotte? Is Fletcher Kane, a sullen but gifted doctor, actually her father? Is he, as he claims, a widower and an Aurora native who left his hometown as a child, only to move back as an adult? Why does Fletcher's sister, who lives with him in Aurora, disappear after Charlotte’s murder? Is anything in this case what it appears to be?

Along the way, subplots abound.

One character claims to have had a face-to-face conversation with Jesus while out in the woods. Desperate people from far and wide convince themselves that the angel atop a cemetery monument bleeds, and that Solemn has miraculous healing powers. A conflicted Catholic priest turns up at Cork’s house, falling down drunk. The collapse of a prominent couple’s loveless marriage weakens the legal case against Solemn. And a bizarre religious practice emerges as an element in the plot.

Blood Hollow builds to a shocking but satisfying climax that should leave readers eager for a return visit to Aurora, Minnesota. Once they have caught their breath, that is.

Review: "Purgatory Ridge," William Kent Krueger

By Paul Carrier

Once a cop, always a cop?

That’s an open question at the start of Purgatory Ridge, the third of 19 books in William Kent Krueger’s (mostly) Minnesota-based mystery series featuring Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor.

A onetime Chicago cop and, more recently, the sheriff of rural Tamarack County in northern Minnesota, O’Connor has been at loose ends since voters tossed him out as sheriff. They did so after O’Connor fatally shot a resort owner who gunned down O’Connor’s close friend, an indigenous man named Sam Winter Moon.

O’Connor’s replacement as sheriff has announced that he will not seek reelection, prompting local Democratic leaders to urge O’Connor to try for a comeback. But O’Connor, who is of Irish and Ojibwe ancestry, is undecided, in part because his wife Jo, a lawyer who represents the local Ojibwe people, is not at all keen on the idea.

Whether O’Connor has a political future gets bumped to the back burner when an explosion at a lumber mill in O’Connor’s home town of Aurora kills an Ojibwe man, Charlie Warren. The hot-tempered mill owner, Karl Lindstrom, has long been at odds with the Ojibwe over his plans to harvest old-growth white pines (known as “Our Grandfathers,” to the Ojibwe).

Did Warren plant the explosive to sabotage the mill and accidentally kill himself in the process, as Lindstrom suggests? The O’Connors think the idea is preposterous because Warren was well-respected and peaceful, but investigators are withholding judgment.

Perhaps some other, more radical, Ojibwe was responsible? Or one of the militant white demonstrators who gather outside the mill to protest Lindstrom’s harvesting? The publisher of the local newspaper says a self-described but anonymous “eco-warrior” from something called the “Army of the Earth” has claimed responsibility in a phone call. Additional theories emerge as the novel unfolds, including one involving an embittered man with a grievance that has nothing to do with the fate of “Our Grandfathers.”

The suspense builds as the plot picks up speed. Someone blows up a boat in an attempted murder. Four people, including two children, are kidnapped for ransom. The U.S. Forest Service is called in to fight a raging wildfire that threatens to engulf “Our Grandfathers.” A group of indigenous men are taken into custody in the mistaken belief that they are terrorists. Federal state and county law enforcement agencies are all drawn into the fray. As is O’Connor, of course.

Eventually, things go from bad to worse. Much worse.

The appeal of the early novels in Krueger’s series (I’ve only read the first three) extends beyond the mysteries that O’Connor invariably plays a major part in solving, despite his status as a mere civilian.

For one thing, Krueger, who lives in Minnesota, has a clear attachment to the Ojibwe, who consistently emerge as compelling characters. One of the most intriguing in Purgatory Ridge is Henry  Meloux, an elderly Ojibwa of great serenity and wisdom. Krueger works occasional Ojibwe terms into the text (such as manidoog, or spirits of the lake), providing an added layer of authenticity.

Moreover, O’Connor’s personal life makes for compelling reading as well. He and Jo have reconciled since each of them cheated on the other, but their marriage remains somewhat troubled at the outset of Purgatory Ridge. If you add to the mix their two teenage daughters, their young son, and Jo’s unmarried, live-in sister, family dynamics provide an interesting counterpoint to the sleuthing that is at the heart of the novels.

Purgatory Ridge builds to a riveting climax featuring a surprise ending that should leave mystery fans eager to dive into Blood Hollow, the fourth installment in this engrossing series.