Copper River

June 12, 2006
On the run from anonymous contract killers, ex-sheriff Cork O'Connor goes to ground in a remote corner of Michigan's Upper Peninsula in Krueger's subdued sixth thriller. In the 10 days since the end of Mercy Falls
(2005), Cork has picked up a gunshot wound to the leg. His widowed veterinarian cousin, Jewell DuBois, is able to install a Penrose drain, leaving Cork largely immobilized. Cork's friend, security specialist Dina Willner, appears to watch his back, yet most of the plot shifts away from potential shootouts with hit men to Jewell's 13-year-old son, Ren; Ren's tomboy pal, Charlie; and the corpse of a teenage girl found floating in the Copper River. As usual, Krueger conveys a solid sense of place, the woodlands near the shore of Lake Superior, northwest out of Marquette, "where scenes from Anatomy of a Murder
had been filmed." But the segue to the familiar children-in-peril theme feels like a cop-out, especially since the previous, superior novel had primed readers for something more intense and harrowing.

As David Chandler delivers the graceful, sometimes grisly, prose of Krueger's latest Cork O'Conner mystery, he depicts the rugged beauty of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as if it were one of the characters. O'Connor, who is hiding out from a hit man at his cousin's isolated cabin, becomes entangled in a local murder mystery with roots that are decades old. Chandler's voice moves ably from the lawmen to the sassy teenager who is sought by both police and killer as a witness. The novel gets a bit preachy about the cougar debate among Michigan locals, but Chandler takes the exposition in stride. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine