Thursday, January 10, 2013

2. Iron Lake - William Kent Krueger


#1 Cork O'Connor
1998, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster
438 pgs.
Murder Mystery for adults
Finished Jan. 10, 2012
Goodreads Rating: 3.94
My Rating:  Awesome, couldn't wait to read/5
Acquired TPPL paperback
Setting: contemporary northern Minnesota in winter
1st sentence/s:  "Cork O'Connor first heard the story of the Windigo in the fall of 1965 when he hunted the big bear with Sam Winter Moon.  He was fourteen and his father was dead a year."

My comments: This book, the first in a new series for me, kept my interest and beckoned me to read even when I shouldn't have taken the time. Cork O'Connor, the protagonist, is smart and real, with small flaws and misgivings. Krueger did kill off a lot of his characters, though, but I can't think of any holes in the plot to speak of and the mystery was quite plausible. The setting, rural Minnesota that includes an Indian reservation in the blizzards of winter (it's winter right now, as I write this, and my feet are freezing, so I can totally relate) worked really well. It's exciting to find a new series that has a setting and protagonist that immediately pulled me in. I'm going out on a limb giving it a five, it's probably closer to 4.5, but I'm not going to quibble.

Goodreads Review:
Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his "former" status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago's South Side, there's not much that can shock him. But when the town's judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.

As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home

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