Boundary Waters

 

Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger

Cork O'Connor #2

Mystery

2010

Narrated by David Chandler

Finished on March 6, 2025

Rating: 2/5 (OK)

Publisher's Blurb:

The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian-American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh -- a country-western singer at the height of her fame -- has disappeared.

Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire former sheriff Cork O'Connor to find his daughter, and Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on her trail as well -- men hired not just to find her, but to kill her. 

As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death -- violent and sudden -- stalks them.

Meh. 

I enjoy having a series to read over the course of a year or two, and once I got caught up on Susan Hill and Deborah Crombie's mysteries, I thought it would be nice to give William Kent Krueger's books a try. I re-read Iron Lake to refresh my memory of the cast of characters, as well as Cork's backstory, and enjoyed it quite well. I began reading Boundary Waters, but struggled to stay engaged, so I switched to the audiobook. Unfortunately, I didn't care for the reader, and my interest continued to wane, but I stuck with it to the end. I'm not sure what it was about this particular mystery that failed to entertain me, but I'm not compelled to move on to #3 (Purgatory Ridge). I have two more recent releases in the series on my shelf, and since I've learned over the years that the later installments in a mystery series tend to be better, I may give them a try. We'll see.

Iron Lake

 

Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

Cork O'Connor #1

Mystery

1998

Finished on February 3, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota (population 3,752). Embittered over losing his job as a cop and over the marital meltdown that has separated him from his wife and 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 a powerful local politician is brutally murdered the same night a young Indian boy goes missing, Cork takes on a harrowing case of corruption, conspiracy, and scandal.

As a blizzard buries Aurora and an old medicine man warns of the arrival of a blood-thirsty mythic beast called the Windigo, Cork must dig for answers hard and fast before more people, among them those he loves, will die.

It was 2014 when I read my first book by William Kent Krueger. Ordinary Grace came highly recommended by a coworker and as luck would have it, the author came to our Barnes & Noble for a book talk and signing.

Yes, I had my own endcap for many years.

I loved Krueger's stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace (you can read my review here) and quickly went on to read Iron Lake (reviewed here), the first in his Cork O'Connor series. I've since read This Tender Land and The River We Remember, but have not yet returned to his mystery series. With two of his most recent installments (Lightning Strike and Fox Creek) on my shelves, I decided it was finally time to spend the next couple of years catching up on the series.

Just as the first time I read it, Iron Lake took me several chapters before I stopped questioning my decision to read it again. By the halfway mark, I was invested in the story, and as the final chapters drew near, I couldn't stop reading, the story was so intense! I stayed up far too late, but it was a good distraction from the current news coming out of Washington, DC. I'd forgotten most of the plot, but remembered one key event, so I wasn't nearly as shocked as I was when I read the book in 2014. I'm excited to get a copy of Boundary Waters and return to Cork and the Minnesota wilderness, but I'm also tempted to re-read Ordinary Grace.