Northwest Angle

Starred review from June 20, 2011
In Krueger's superb 11th novel featuring Cork O'Conner (after Vermilion Drift), the PI and his grown daughter, Jenny, get stranded by a gale on an island in Minnesota's Northwest Angle, an area of the state cut off from the U.S. by 60 miles of Canadian wilderness and the vast Lake of the Woods. Separated from Cork by the storm, Jenny discovers the naked body of a young Native American woman, who was tortured before being shot in the forehead, and her dehydrated but alive infant son. Once reunited, Cork and Jenny tend to the baby while hiding from a stranger in a cigarette boat. Once rescued, Cork teams with local residents to find out who killed the woman, Lily Smalldog, who worked at a remote religious compound. Solid storytelling and intriguing characterizations combine for a sobering look at the power of family and faith and Native American culture. Krueger never writes the same book twice as each installment finds him delving deeper into Cork's psyche.

September 1, 2011
The Minnesota lake is lovely and tranquil, the houseboat commodious and comfortable, the family pleasant, but then Cork O'Connor (Vermillion Drift, 2010, etc.) discovers just how deep and deadly still waters can run.

A pleasing family vacation in a remote, almost idyllic spot comes to an end when the derecho hits. The derecho, a hurricane on steroids, separates Cork and his daughter Jenny from the rest of the O'Connors, almost kills them and lands them on a seemingly deserted island, and smack in the middle of a blood-soaked mystery. In an old, abandoned trappers' cabin they find a girl, a teenager, murdered. They also find her baby very much alive—howling and hungry. Cork asks the obvious questions—who, how and why?—but Jenny's response is markedly different. She's drawn to the now motherless little boy, a reaction so intense that it startles even her. She will serve and protect the child from all threats and dangers, no matter what forms they take. They arrive, soon enough, in the form of a gunman, stalking them. Is he the murderer returning to the scene of his crime? Is he trying to rid the world of all possible witnesses? Or—to Jenny the thought could hardly be more terrifying—does he want the baby? But first things first. Cork, weaponless, must now invent a strategy for coping with an armed predator who makes no secret of his unequivocal enmity, and then—Cork being Cork—he must find his way back to who, how and why, though he senses almost from the outset that the answers will have unintended, unwelcome consequences.

Dependable Krueger has another all-out go at good versus evil, but in this, the 12th of his much-respected series, the straight-arrow, exemplary O'Connors might strike readers as a shade too exemplary.  

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011

Star of a series that includes the recent best-selling Vermilion Drift, Cork O'Connor is enjoying a houseboat vacation with his daughter on Lake of the Woods when a violent storm forces them to seek shelter on an island. There they discover the body of a teenage girl and a baby boy who's alive, if whimpering. Soon someone or something is chasing them to a remote area called Northwest Angle. Dependably scary stuff from award winner Krueger.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
The eleventh novel starring ex-Chicago cop and longtime Minnesota private eye Cork OConnor is part adventure, part mystery, and all knockout thriller. Krueger takes the catastrophic storm system known as a derecho, which swept hurricane-strength winds through northern Minnesota on July 3, 1999, as his catalyst. With OConnor and his family still reeling from the disappearance and death of his wife two years before, he decides to make a stab at reuniting them and staunching some of the pain by orchestrating a houseboat vacation on a lake that borders Canada. The derecho hits, the family is scattered, and OConnor and teen daughter Jenny find themselves on an uninhabited small islanduninhabited, that is, except for a lone infant. The infants mother is nearby, not killed by the storm but bound, tortured, and bludgeoned to death. OConnor and Jenny soon learn that the killer is now stalking them. Catch-your-breath suspense throughout.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)