Friday, September 25, 2026
David Levine on writers: Dante Alighieri
David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear.
First Lines: Lee Child
Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever.
The Hard Way
Lee Child
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Review: "Northwest Angle," William Kent Krueger
By Paul Carrier
Northwest Angle, the 11th novel in William Kent Krueger’s long-running mystery series (22 books and counting) starts off pleasantly enough, with Cork O’Connor and his family vacationing aboard a rented houseboat on a remote lake that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border.
But the getaway is about to take an ominous turn.
For one thing, an oddly named meteorological disaster know as a derecho is in the offing. What’s a derecho, you ask? Here’s Merriam-Webster’s definition: “a large fast-moving complex of thunderstorms with powerful straight-line winds that cause widespread destruction.”
Of course, Cork, his three children (two adult daughters and younger son), and his sister-in-law and her husband have no idea what a derecho is, or that one is about to bear down on them. But once the storm blows through, many islands in the lake are wastelands and the lake itself is dotted with tree limbs and other debris,.
Cork’s oldest daughter Jenny finds herself stranded on an island. Initially, her siblings and their father are unaccounted for. That leaves sister-in-law Rose and her husband Mal alone on the houseboat, searching for family members as best they can. Cork’s daughter Anne and son Stephen eventually reunite with Rose and Mal. And Cork does find his way to Jenny’s island, but not before Jenny discovers both a horrendous crime and a tiny miracle.
Jenny finds a cabin on the island containing the body of a young woman who has been tortured and murdered. Nearby, she also finds an infant, hungry and dehydrated but still very much alive. Fortunately, there are clean diapers, baby formula and a Coleman stove in the cabin.
Why was the woman murdered and her child abandoned? Will the killer or killers return while Cork and Jenny are still on the scene? If that happens, how will Cork defend himself, his daughter and the infant? As a former county sheriff, Cork is intimately familiar with guns, but he happens to be unarmed.
Cork, Jenny and the infant move to a makeshift shelter elsewhere on the island (and, later still, to another island nearby). But when Cork returns to the cabin to further investigate it he discovers that the murder victim’s body has disappeared.
Is the removal of the corpse connected to a mysterious speedboat that the O’Connors spotted surveying the area with a searchtlight? In short order, two things become clear. The guy in that boat is somehow connected to the dead woman. And whatever he’s up to, he’s not on a rescue mission to save people stranded by the storm.
Cork, Jenny and the baby eventually join the rest of the O’Connor clan, and a murder investigation is launched. The early stages of that probe reveal that the victim was a young Ojibwe woman named Lily Smalldog. Her half brother, Noah Smalldog, is suspected of having killed Lily, but he’s proving to be elusive.
Subsequent events suggest that the murderer was intent on kidnapping Lily’s son for reasons unknown, and remains determined to do so even if that triggers more deaths. When another man who knew Lily disappears from his blood-splattered home, it begins to look like Lily’s killer may have found a second victim.
Krueger’s pacing is brisk and his plot is well-crafted. There’s no shortage of nail-biting scenes in Northwest Angle, including decidedly unpleasant encounters with a group of stone-faced religious fanatics who may have ties to Noah Smalldog. The plot takes such a surprising turn in the final chapters that I was astounded, which, I suspect, will by the reaction of other readers as well. An already gripping narrative quickly becomes highly charged.
Over the course of the novel, Krueger balances drama with more restrained touches, such as the increasing maturity of young Stephen O’Connor, the tense relationship between Jenny and her boyfriend, and Cork’s ongoing struggle to cope with the murder of his wife Jo, which occurred in a previous novel. Having found and cared for the newfound infant after his mother was murdered, Jenny becomes extremely attached to the child, amid signs that she hopes to adopt him.
Part of the appeal of the first 11 O’Connor novels, which usually are set in or near Minnesota, where Cork lives, stems from Krueger’s frequent, nuanced references to the region’s Indigenous people. Cork has some Ojibwe (aka, Chippewa) ancestry and his son, in particular, shares Cork’s interest in tribal culture, traditions and language. That adds an intriguing element to the series, including this entry.
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