Copper River: A Novel (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series)

Two-time Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has "moved to the head of the crime fiction class" (Chicago Sun-Times) with his gripping series featuring Sheriff Cork O'Connor. In Copper River, Cork is running for his life — and straight into a murderous conspiracy involving teenage runaways.

Desperately avoiding the clutches of professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he's hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen-year-old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River — and then another teenager vanishes. Instead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses on tracking a ring of killers who prey on innocent children — before anyone else falls victim. But as his deadly followers close in, Cork realizes he's made an error any good man might make — and it may be his last.

Publishers Weekly

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. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.