Heaven's Keep by William Kent Krueger

“If you don’t know Cork O’Connor, get to know him now.” ---Booklist

Corcoran O’Connor is the Ojibwe-Irish sheriff-private investigator central character of a series of award-winning mysteries by William Kent Krueger. Krueger is one of the three authors that make up the Minnesota Crime Wave, a group that visited Carnegie-Stout Public Library in January 2007 as part of The Big Read programming for The Maltese Falcon. It’s not sacrilege to mention Kent Krueger in the same sentence as Dashiell Hammett; yes, Krueger’s books are that good. Heaven’s Keep is the ninth in the series which began in 1998 with Iron Lake. The tenth, Vermilion Drift, came out in September 2010, and Krueger has already signed contracts for two more Cork O’Connor mysteries.

Taut suspense, a strong sense of place and believable characters are Krueger’s hallmarks. Leaving their north woods Minnesota home, Cork and his thirteen-year-old son Stephen travel to the Wyoming Rockies to try and find what happened to their wife and mother Jo, whose plane is missing. Jo, an attorney, was traveling with tribal representatives to the National Congress of American Indians to discuss oversight of Indian gaming casinos, when the plane goes down in a blizzard in the Washakie Wilderness. Cork and Jo had quarreled over his interest in going back to work for the Tamarack County sheriff’s office just before she left, so Cork feels the additional weight of an unhappy parting. Will Cork be able to say “I’m sorry” to Jo? Was the plane sabotaged to prevent its occupants from speaking out on gaming issues? Was the pilot a stereotypical drunken Indian? Read Heaven’s Keep to find these answers and discover how Krueger keeps his readers enthralled and asking for more.

~ Michelle, Adult Services