Manitou Canyon

July 4, 2016
In Edgar-winner Krueger’s uneven 15th Cork O’Connor thriller (after 2014’s Windigo Island), Lindsay Harris and her brother, Trevor, hire the ex-sheriff turned PI to find their architect grandfather, John Harris, who recently vanished from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Winter is coming, and Cork’s daughter is getting married soon, but the siblings’ plea is compelling and Harris was a childhood friend, so Cork accompanies Lindsay into the wilderness to see what Tamarack County Search and Rescue might have missed. When the pair fails to return, friends and family investigate. Meanwhile, Cork and Lindsay fight for their lives. Honorable and courageous yet full of self-doubt, Cork seeks not only Harris but also redemption for past failures. By contrast, most of Krueger’s female characters lack depth and act only out of love for—or lack of love from—men. References to Ojibwe culture and an extraordinary sense of place provide color and texture, but deliberate pacing and an anticlimactic conclusion undercut an intriguing setup and the plot’s inherent tension. Agent: Danielle Egan-Miller, Browne & Miller Literary Associates.

August 1, 2016
This is a mystery made up of several shiver-inducing levers: survival story, hostage situation, man tracking man. The setting for most of the action is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness that stretches between Minnesota and Canada for a million acres, filled with recreational, escapist, and murderous opportunities. In this, the fifteenth in Krueger's Cork O'Connor series, a wealthy entrepreneur goes missing on a camping trip with his two twentysomething grandchildren. The grandchildrenbrother and sisterseek O'Connor's help. O'Connor, part Irish, part Ojibwe, was the former Tamarack County sheriff and now runs a Northwoods burger joint and does security and investigative work on his own. He has a deep knowledge of the Boundary Waters and agrees to search for the grandfather with his granddaughter. They quickly learn that they are being hunted. All of O'Connor's wilderness skills are put to the test in a plot that keeps tightening around O'Connor and the granddaughterand the reader's nerves. A first-rate addition to this series, with Krueger's usual inclusion of Northwoods atmosphere and Ojibwe tradition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)