The wife of the retired Tamarack County judge is coming home
after being in town. It’s December in Minnesota’s arrowhead region. Cold. Snow.
They live out in the quiet woods that border the Boundary Waters.
She pulls into her driveway to find a man crouched over.
Thinking her husband has gotten himself locked out, she walks over. The figure
looks up and shoves a knife into her belly.
The sheriff has no clues to her disappearance. Cork
O’Connor, former Chicago cop, Tamarack County deputy, sheriff and now a quasi-retired
private investigator, gets added to the search.
Cork’s 17yo son Stephan has eyes only for Marlee, a local
Ojibwe. He goes over to her house for a little high school tete a tete (wink,
wink). She lets the barking dog out. Soon, they hear nothing. They follow the dog’s tracks out to the lake
and find that the dog has been killed; decapitated.
Cork’s daughter Anne has returned from San Francisco with
strong questions about her commitment to becoming a nun. She needs time alone
to sort out decisions about her future. Not to mention that Marlee’s mom is
hitting on him. Lots going on in the life of Cork O’Connor.
Clues are few, but a couple of things point to a guy Cork
arrested some 20yr ago, and the Judge sentenced to the max possible. Couldn’t
be him. He’s locked up tight. But more and more points to him.
O’Connor is Krueger’s continuing character and is the focus
of 13 other titles. The first I read was Trickster’s Point and was entirely
impressed. Then Ordinary Grace (not an O’Connor story) blew me away. Tamarack
County has, I suspect, convinced me the try and find the other O’Connor books,
starting back at the beginning. Thanks to the good folks at Simon and Schuster
for passing along a copy of this book and especially for the hook into the
O’Connor series. Can you say Power Rotation?
East Coast Don
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