Boundary Waters
A Cork O'Connor Mystery
-
-
4.5 • 6 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Former small-town sheriff Cork O’Connor leads a desperate search-and-rescue mission into the unforgiving Minnesota wilderness in this “gritty, bloody adventure” (Publishers Weekly) from critically acclaimed author William Kent Krueger’s award-winning mystery series.
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 Cork O’Connor to find his daughter. Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on Shiloh’s 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Krueger follows up his sure-handed debut novel, Iron Lake (1998), with an equally effective second thriller featuring former Chicago cop, now former local sheriff Cork O'Connor and his adventures in the warm-spirited little town of Aurora, Minn., and the harsh wilderness that surrounds it. The durable O'Connor, who used to watch over the territory as sheriff until he was voted out of office in a personal and professional meltdown, now tends a burger stand but still has a reputation as a go-to guy when trouble arises. It does so in the form of William Raye, an aging country singer who's looking for his daughter, Shiloh, a famous rock musician who disappeared several months earlier into the Boundary Waters, the thickly forested, lake-dotted area to the north. O'Connor isn't looking for work, but he takes the case because Shiloh is an Aurora native, and O'Connor hopes someone would do the same for him if any of his three kids were lost. Before he can even head into the woods, FBI agents show up, as well as an old casino gangster from Las Vegas. They, too, all want Shiloh found, but none will say exactly why. O'Connor, accompanied by two agents plus Raye, and a father and son from the local Anishinaabe tribe, packs up and heads out by canoe in what becomes a gritty, bloody adventure of considerable emotional depth. The action is deftly interspersed with glimpses of the terror Shiloh is enduring in the wilderness--at the hands of those who would bury an old crime--and with tense scenes back in Aurora, where O'Connor's family and other townsfolk worry about the operation's success. Krueger's writing, strong and bold yet with the mature mark of restraint, pulls this exciting search-and-rescue mission through with a hard yank. Author tour.
