Trickster’s Point

Well, it had to happen. WKK finally wrote a dud.
This one’s a real yawner, unfortunately. I thought that the jumping back and forth (between present day and Cork’s/Jubal’s past) might add some interest to the plot, but it didn’t play out that way. Kept waiting for the pace to pick up or the plot to become more interesting, and while there were a couple of twists and turns, overall this was average to boring at best. My opinion seems to be in the minority on this, but I think that long-time readers/fans of a particular author can sometimes fall into ‘group think’ and lose their critical analysis skills.
Ever since Cork’s wife (Jo) was killed off a few books past, the author (and Cork) seem to be struggling to rediscover their creative muse. O’Connor and Krueger need to stop recycling the same tired themes over and over again. Yes, we get it: Henry Meloux is a wise old Indian, Cork attracts danger, Cork’s kids are struggling with the loss of their mother and their criminally irresponsible father, etc.
In particular, the relationship that has developed between Cork and Rainy (Henry’s niece, I think?) has just kind of happened, without any real back-story or deep understanding of how/why they became attracted to each other.
Oh well, hopefully the next one in the series (Tamarack County) will be a return to form for Krueger. Fingers crossed.

I have managed to read the Cork OConnor books more or less in sequence, so I can tell you that Cork has remained a remarkably stable character throughout, partly because he has been allowed to exist in real time. His adventures have run against a background of rash youth, marriage (not always tranquil), an engaging, real, set of children, and above all, a mixed heritage of Ojibway/White descent, all played out in the beautiful wilderness of northern Minnesota.

Here we find him again alone, widowed for several years, with his children now living their own lives. I had wondered how Mr. Kreuger was going to handle this, and now I know; he carries us back to Corks boyhood. The story opens in the present, with Cork watching his one-time best friend from high school slowly die of an arrow wound, shot from ambush. They have been on a bow-hunting trip, are alone, and the arrow appears to be one of Corks, which he makes himself.

The friend, Jubal Little, from whom Cork has long since grown apart, is now a prominent politician, and is only a few days away from election to the office of Governor of Minnesota. Naturally, the incident brings massive attention to Aurora, Corks little town, and to Cork himself. The local law-enforcement establishment, all Corks personal friends, solidly believe in Corks innocence, but in the absence of any other evidence he is painfully exposed.

The rest of the story traces Corks efforts to find the real killer, and brings in a lot of interesting people from his past. As such, the amount of violence is muted there is one rifle blast and the action is pretty much the reconstruction of old relationships. It makes for an almost tranquil read; a reflection of the calm which is settling over Corks life. (Or is Mr. Kreuger just leading us on?)

Throw a rock into a still pond and the ripples eddy outward until they fade into the distance. That’s how Trickster’s Point unfolds, from the central event — the murder of Cork O’Connor’s longtime friend and current gubernatorial candidate Jubal Little — through the ripples into the past that connect them to each other, the woman they have both loved, and a death they both witnessed many years earlier. As Trickster’s Point opens, O’Connor watches Jubal die, the victim of a hunting mishap that left him with an arrow through his heart. But is it an accident? The arrow that killed Jubal is identical to the ones that Cork makes himself, and the evidence points to O’Connor as the killer. As a skilled bow hunter, Cork has the means to kill Little. As an outspoken opponent of Jubal’s candidacy, Cork seems to have the motive. With law enforcement authorities looking to close a sensational murder case, Cork O’Connor has to find the real killer by looking long and hard into his own past and the darkness that seems to dwell there.

William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series places him squarely among the real greats of mystery writers whose books transcend the genre — his stories are not just good mysteries, they’re great novels, where the “who” and the “how” are less important than the “why.” Cork joins James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and Ian Rankin’s John Rebus as one of the great central characters of modern mystery writing — a man whose stubborn determination to find the truth of things brings him face-to-face with the darkness that clouds the hearts of those he knows and threatens those he loves most in the world.

I like all Cork 0’Connor books!

Always enjoy the Cork O’Connor stories and this was no exception. Possibly If I thought really hard it might not have been my number one among William Kent Krueger’s works but the standard is so high

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