William Kent Krueger is an American crime novelist, born in Wyoming in 1950 and long settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His Cork O'Connor series follows a former sheriff of mixed Ojibwe and Irish descent through the small towns and reservation country of northern Minnesota. It began with Iron Lake (1998), which won the Anthony and Barry awards for best first novel, and has run to twenty books, most recently Spirit Crossing. Blood Hollow and Mercy Falls each took the Anthony Award for Best Novel....
Iron Lake
Iron Lake
Synopsis
Aurora, Minnesota: population 3,752, deep in the north woods, and buried in a December blizzard. Corcoran 'Cork' O'Connor used to be the sheriff. Now he runs a burger stand, his marriage is failing, and the town has moved on without him.
Then a prominent local judge is found dead — apparently by his own hand — and on the same night an Ojibwe boy who delivered his newspapers disappears. Cork, part Irish and part Anishinaabe and belonging fully to neither community, is the only person willing to treat the two events as one story. What he uncovers runs into casino money, county corruption and old land grievances, while an aging medicine man warns him that a Windigo is walking.
Iron Lake is the first Cork O'Connor novel and the beginning of one of American crime fiction's longest-running regional series.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
Cork O'ConnorProtagonist
Former sheriff of Tamarack County, part Irish and part Anishinaabe, working his way back from disgrace.
Jo O'ConnorSupporting
Cork's wife, a lawyer who represents the Iron Lake Ojibwe.
Henry MelouxSupporting
Ojibwe medicine man and Cork's guide, who speaks of the Windigo.
Sam Winter MoonSupporting
A figure from Cork's past who shaped his connection to the Anishinaabe.
