"Windigo Island"
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Fast-paced toward
the end. Lots of
Native American
references that
bogged me down
a little.
|
When the body of a teenage Ojibwe girl washes up on the shore of an island in Lake Superior, the residents of the nearby Bad Bluff reservation whisper that it was the work of a mythical beast, the Windigo, or a vengeful spirit called Michi Peshu. Such stories have been told by the Ojibwe people for generations, but they don't solve the mystery of how the girl and her friend, Mariah Arceneaux, disappeared a year ago. At the request of the Arceneaux family, Cork O'Connor, former sheriff turned private investigator, is soon on the case.
But on the Bad Bluff reservation, nobody's talking. Still, Cork puts enough information together to find a possible trail. In Duluth, Minnesota, he learns from an Ojibwe social worker that both Duluth and the Twin Cities are among the most active areas in the US for sex trafficking of vulnerable women, many of whom are young Native Americans. As the investigation deepens, so does the danger. Cork realizes he's not only up against those who control the lucrative sex enterprise--he must also battle government agencies more than willing to look the other way.
Yet Cork holds tight to his purpose--Mariah, an innocent 15-year-old girl at the heart of this grotesque web, who is still missing and whose family is desperate to get her back. With only the barest hope of saving her, Cork prepares to battle men whose evil rivals that of the bloodthirsty Windigo and who are as powerful, elusive and vengeful as the dark spirit Michi Peshu.
"Trickster's Point"
Cork O'Connor is sitting in the shadow of a towering monolith known as Trickster's Point, deep in the Minnesota wilderness. Beside him is the first Native American governor-elect, Jubal Little, who is slowly dying with an arrow through his heart.Although the men have been bow hunting, this is no accident. The arrow in the governor's heart belongs to Cork.
When he becomes the primary suspect in the murder, Cork understands full well that he's been set up. As he works to clear his name and track the real killer, he recalls his long, complex relationship with Jubal, the Native kid who aspired to be a populist politician and grew to become a cunning man capable of treachery and murder.
As Cork looks deeply into his own past, he comes face to face with the many motives, good and ill, that lead men and women into the difficult, sometimes deadly, political arena.
With crisp writing filled with the twists and turns his fans have come to expect, Krueger delivers another knockout novel of suspense.
"Northwest Angle"
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| What is a derecho? |
With his family caught in the crosshairs of a group of brutal killers, detective Cork O’Connor must solve the murder of a young girl in the latest installment of William Kent Krueger’s unforgettable New York Times bestselling series.Amid the wreckage, Cork and Jenny discover an old trapper’s cabin where they find the body of a teenage girl. She wasn’t killed by the storm, however; she’d been bound and tortured before she died. Whimpering sounds coming from outside the cabin lead them to a tangle of branches toppled by the vicious winds.
Underneath the debris, they find a baby boy, hungry and dehydrated, but still very much alive. Powerful forces intent on securing the child pursue them to the isolated Northwest Angle, where it’s impossible to tell who among the residents is in league with the devil.
Cork understands that to save his family he must solve the puzzle of this mysterious child whom death follows like a shadow.
“Part adventure, part mystery, and all knockout thriller” (Booklist ), Northwest Angle is a dynamic addition to William Kent Krueger’s critically acclaimed, award-winning series.
"That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word."
New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson's Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.
Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.
Told from Frank's perspective forty years after that fateful summer, "Ordinary Grace" is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.
"Tamarack County"
As a blizzard swells just days before Christmas, the car belonging to
the wife of a retired local judge is discovered abandoned on a rural
road in Tamarack County.
After days of fruitless effort, the
search-and-rescue team has little hope that she’ll be found alive, if at
all. Cork O’Connor, former sheriff and now private investigator, is
part of that team.
Early on, Cork notices small things about the woman’s
disappearance that disturb him. But when the beloved pet dog of a friend
is brutally killed and beheaded, he begins to see a startling pattern
in these and other recent dark occurrences in the area. After his own
son comes close to peril, Cork understands that someone is spinning a
deadly web in Tamarack County.
At the center is a murder more than
20 years old, for which an innocent man may have been convicted.
Cork remembers the case only too well. He was the deputy in charge of
the investigation that sent the man to prison.
With the darkest days of the year at hand, the storms
of winter continue to isolate Tamarack County. Somewhere behind the
blind of all that darkness and drifting snow, a vengeful force is at
work. And Cork has only hours to stop it before his family and his
friends pay the ultimate price for the sins of others.
In the dark days following Jo’s disappearance, Cork struggles to cope with his grief. Then two women show up at his doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo’s plane was not the man he claimed to be. It may not be definitive proof, but it’s a ray of light in the darkness surrounding Cork’s loss. Agreeing to investigate, he travels to Wyoming where he battles interference from local law enforcement, hostility from members of the Northern Arapaho community, and dogged assassins determined to throw Cork off the trail—permanently. At the center of all the danger and deception lies the possibility that Jo is not really dead and that, somewhere along the labyrinthine path of his search, Cork will find her alive and waiting for him.
With deft plotting and writing that satisfies as much as it thrills, Heaven’s Keep gives readers an adventure they won’t forget.
