Blood Hollow

Former Tamarack Country Sheriff Cork OConnor isnt comfortable sitting around the house or flipping burgers for hungry tourists at his lakeside lunch shack. When a young woman named Charlotte Kane goes missing after a New Years Eve party, Cork joins the search and rescue mission and heads out into a classic Minnesota snowstorm. The womans corpse turns up four months later and circumstantial evidence for her murder points to a young Ojibwe Indian man named Solemn Winter Moon.
Cork believes that Solemn is innocent and enlists the help of Jo, his wife and a practicing attorney, to help with Solemns defense. This stirs up considerable ill will towards the trio because the citizens of Aurora have already convicted Solemn in their hearts and minds. There is no shortage of other likely suspects such as Charlottes angry father and a Catholic priest with a suspicious background. Cork takes on the roles of private detective and defense consultant to his wife, investigating others in the community who might have motive and opportunity to kill Charlotte.
This book is the fourth novel Ive read in Kruegers Cork Corcoran mystery series and its the best of the lot. He weaves a complex story with many fascinating characters to enjoy along the way. We also get some rich details about Cork, Jo, and the children of the Corcoran family that make the experience that much more enjoyable.
About half way into the book I thought Id figured out who the guilty party was but I was totally wrong. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way with surprises popping up at the most unlikely points. Its only when you reach the end of the book that Krueger reveals who the murderer is.
Once you read the first several pages of this book, youll have a devilish time putting it aside.

I had read the previous books in this series and could not remember why I had stopped. Shortly after starting this one I may have discovered the problem: Cork is a little slow. He brags about how hes a sheriff at heart, suspicious and curious, but in truth he misses a lot. I saw numerous red flags, but he saw…nothing. Time and time again I was thinking he should have noticed something, asked something, pursued something, but he was oblivious. Sometimes he circled back eventually, and sometimes another character just flat out told him what hed missed. And hed think something like, That makes sense. I did think that I could predict how the story would go, but in this I was surprised. The plot got quite complicated and unexpected. But thats not always a good thing.

This is the fourth book in a Series featuring the primary character, Cork O’Connor. I’ve just started the 5th. William Kent Krueger is a new author for me and I had not read any of his books. This series was started in 2004 and I don’t quite remember how I started with him. But his books are exciting and suspenseful and flow very nicely. By now, in the 5th book of the series, I’m very fond of the characters and think of Cork and his family as people you would like to know because they are just good people and work at righting the wrongs of life. I’m hooked on the series so will read them all. Each book does stand on its own but it is nice to start at the beginning because you really get to know the characters and really learn to care about them.

In this, the 4th of the Cork O’Connor series, the story opens in the deep freeze of a Minnesota winter with a search for the missing daughter of a wealthy resident of Aurora, where former sheriff Cork O’Connor lives with his family and runs a burger joint. Months later, the spring thaws reveal a body: the missing girl, along with some questionable evidence found nearby. At the request of a friend, and in spite of disapproval from the newly elected sheriff, Cork gets involved in the investigation, anxious to protect the rights of the only suspect, Solemn Winter Moon, a troubled young half Indian who was romantically involved with the dead girl. As Cork discovers, secrets and lies abound, complicating his efforts to know the truth about the crime, the victim, her family, the suspect, the law in Aurora, and even threats to his own family. Raised Catholic, Cork has long struggled with a crisis of faith, and in this novel, he comes full face on with what it means to believe. Or not.

One of Krueger’s great gifts in writing this series is his ability to portray the landscape and atmosphere of Cork O’Connor’s Minnesota. Place becomes another character in these novels….but not so much in Blood Hollow. Even the wine colored stream that provides the title seems meagerly evoked and unimportant, a throwaway description. While the murderer was apparent, at least to me, early on, much of the mystery is confusing and incomprehensible. One character’s disappearance years earlier is never solved, and the motive, though explained, seems more than a little incredible. Some of the characters, too, are merely outlines, without enough depth to make us care about them or even believe in them.

Blood Hollow does not equal Krueger’s earlier O’Connor entries, in my opinion. However, the man can write, so I look forward to moving on to Mercy Falls, next in the lineup.

It’s a good book, keeps you guessing and doesn’t reveal its secret til near the end. Well worth your time.

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