Cork O'Connor Mysteries: Suspense and Joy in Books 2 and 3

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Detectives' personal lives often become a drag as their series wear on. So it's a twist that, three novels into the Cork O'Connor mystery series by William Kent Krueger, the detective has grown more physically fit, more connected to his family, and more confident that crime-fighting is something he loves and does well. 

Perhaps other authors confuse complication and darkness with authenticity, but at least so far into the series, Krueger finds authentic joy in his created world:

Sunlight dripping down the houses on Gooseberry Lane like butter melting down pancakes. The streets empty and clean. The surface of Iron Lake on such a still morning looking solid as polished steel.
God, [Cork] loved this place. (PR ch.1).

Fresh air and clean living help. Cork (short for "Corcoran") lives in Aurora, Minnesota among mountains, lakes, forests, and members of the Ojibwe tribe. He has cut back on cigarettes and alcohol. He stays in touch with his spiritual roots in the tribe and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic church.

Krueger takes the crime genre out of dank bedrooms and arid offices into the beautiful but dangerous realm of wilderness adventure stories. In novels Boundary Waters (1999) and Purgatory Ridge (2001), Cork's work involves rowing, hiking, swimming in icy waters, and running a long distance.

Cork's quarries do strenuous outdoor activities, too. When Cork joins a search party for a celebrity singer gone missing in Boundary Waters, we follow her steps and know her thoughts. In Purgatory Ridge, it's a kidnapper with a score to settle for the death of his beloved kid brother. Because Krueger engenders sympathy for both hunter and hunted, our suspense builds as we wonder, "Will Cork figure out what's really going on and catch up before it's too late?"

Cork's wife Jo is a lawyer who often represents the Ojibwe tribe in court, so her work complements her husband's. She grows into the role of being a co-hero, a great development in these early books of the series.

Their children include two competent teenaged girls and a much younger boy Stevie who has some special needs, a family reminiscent of Krueger's stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace (see my post More than a Mystery (07/2019)). With an especially vulnerable child in jeopardy, emotional stakes are high for readers as well as for characters. When such a child steps up to do something remarkable for others, it's a joy, as happens in Purgatory Ridge and also in Boundary Waters when the young son of an ex-convict guides his dad and law enforcement on their grueling expedition. Krueger captures the complicated feeling when he writes that Cork feels "the sweet weight of his son's trust" (PR, ch. 12).

With many more books in the series ready for me to read, I'm hoping that Krueger's Cork stays buoyant.

[See my responses to other Krueger books]

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