Red Knife: A Cork O'Connor Mystery (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series Book 8)

Maybe his best certainly my favorite. All had twists but this had turns that brought the unexpected. Red Knife had a human quality that seeped out of every page. Enjoy, I did.

Another excellent book by Krueger. Interesting and timely story and as always so well written. He weaves a mystery into heartfelt stuff.m

As a retired teacher, I can put myself in the place of these students and teachers. As a parent I can understand the fear that accompanies raising children. Krueger has certainly written another compelling novel. It kept me interested throughout.

William Kent Krueger writes the best mystery novels that I've read in a long time. This novel is about former sheriff, now private investigator Cork O'Conner.Cork lives in the remote Northern Minnesota community of Aurora. Aurora is located on Iron Lake and close to an Ojibwa reservation. A new gang called the Red Boyz has formed on the reservation and rumor is that they are running drugs. After a girl dies as a result of crystal meth, her father vows revenge. When the leader of the Red Boyz and his wife are found murdered, Cork has to use all of his power to prevent an all out war between the Ojibwa and the whites.I really enjoyed this novel. It was action packed all of the way until the end. The multiple storylines and mysteries kept me guessing until the last page. The characters and great setting were my favorite parts of the novel. The characters were well rounded individuals that I could imagine meeting, especially in a small northern community. I lived for six years in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now live in Northeast Wisconsin. Although I am not from Northern Minnesota, I loved the remote and beautiful setting. It reminded me a lot of my days in "da" U.P.I have not read all of the Cork O'Conner novels, but I found it easy to pick up without having read the entire series. That being said, I still want to go back and read the ones I haven't read yet!I highly recommend this novel to all lovers of a good mystery, an action packed story, or live in a small Northern town.

This is the penultimate Cork O'Connor mystery, the one appearing just before the stellar HEAVEN'S KEEP. Its putative subject is town/rez tension emerging from the drug-related death of the daughter of a local businessman and the subsequent murder of the head of a rez gang, the Red Boyz. Cork, as an Irish/Ojibwe is, as always, caught in between, doing his best to stop the bloodshed and bring the guilty to justice. The real subject, however, is not Cork's investigation, but Cork's world--a network of families and lives affected by the slaughter and the ways in which that slaughter impacts them directly and personally. One of Krueger's characteristic touches in his novels is his willingness to draw Cork's family into the narrative and, yes, even sacrifice them in some way or other. The story of the succession of mysteries, in other words, is the story of a man and his family. Some mystery writers create protagonists who are essentially timeless, with only the vaguest blips of experience marking their personal narratives. Krueger has opted to focus on the personal world of the protagonist and represent that as realistically as the crime and violence that the protagonist and his family confront. When we begin a Krueger novel we enter northern Minnesota, we enter the rez, we enter Aurora and we enter Cork's home. Thus, there are so-called 'mainstream' elements in Krueger's mysteries, more than in most mysteries, but the mysteries themselves are compelling and the larger and smaller worlds in which they are located are fully realized. All in all, a very nice read.

the native belief system brings to the story. The connectedness of all things is omnipresent. So much pain and loss could be avoided, if we all understood this. You

Kent Kueger's work has always had a friendly, down home quality to it. Cork O'Connor is, in my mind, a young James Stewart-ish sort with the decent, do-the-right-thing-even-when-no one-is-watching values I find in my friends in northern Wisconsin. In Red Knife he's caught without his sheriff's badge attempting to not only solve a murder but head off a brewing civil war within the Ojibwe tribe.As always, Krueger's descriptions of Cork's family life, his devotion to finding peacful answers to violent questions, his internal toughness are fascinating as they depict a man who is examining himself as he investigates others. Krueger also takes secondary characters and brings them to life, imbuing them with a vibrancy that makes them human, flawed and sympathetic.The plot of Red Knife wanders a bit but never goes entirely off track . . . until the end. You may see it coming; you may not. It's as though what we expect from a Kent Krueger novel, and from this book in particular, wasn't good enough for Krueger's editor so a new and far more high drama and troublesome ending got tacked on. Sort of like running an eighteen-wheeler right through the center of town, red lights be damned. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't.I didn't like it. Jarring and unnecessary, Red Knife's ending didn't fit the story and calls the rest of this great series into question.

I am a life long reader - and I read the whole genre of literature from Politics to basket weavingwith one exception, I don’t read romance novels. Kruger’s books, all 18 + of them, are withoutexception the overall best writer I have ever read. After reading the first one I was hooked - I nowhave all of them. He tells the story in such a way you are there with him, walking in the woods,or facing whatever obstacles he encounters. He has a “sit on the front porch rocking chair” demeanorthat comes thru in all of his novels. I have but one promise & that is you won’t be disappointed.

A good read

O'Connor No 7 zeigt junge Ojibwe-Indianer in derselben Stimmung, in der die Afro-Amerikaner in den 70er Jahren waren: Selbstbewusst und aggressiv, nachdem sie lange Zeit betrogen und verachtet am Rande der amerikanischen Gesellschaft gelebt hatten. Eine Gruppe von jungen Männern sammelt sich um einen Anführer, der sie weg von Drogen und Alkohol zu einem traditionsbewussten Leben führen will. Als dieser Anführer ermordet wird, bricht in Tamarack-County die Hölle los. (Unter anderem kritisiert Krueger hier auch die Waffenvernarrttheit der US-Amis).Lebendige Figuren, strake Konflikter, Spannung und Emotion.

コークは保安官をやめて狩猟期間限定のハンバーグ店を開くかたわら個人で探偵業を営み、愛妻ジョーと活発な子供たちに囲まれ平穏に過ごしていた。土地の白人有力者の18歳になる娘が覚せい剤で死に、それをそそのかしたとされる若者がレッド・ボーイズという群れにいることからそのボスが報復を恐れてコークにボディガードを頼んだが、対応する前にボスは妻ともども殺された。ボスの父親は先住民アジブエ族の勇士で逆に復讐に燃える。コークの後任保安官マーシャ・ドロスは白人であり、法律に則って捜査を進めたいとコークに応援を求め、またアジブエ族は祖先から引き継いできた「目には目を」という自分たちの信条でことを運ぶと言い混血のコークに決断を迫る。こころ優しいコークは両者の狭間で汗をかく。愛娘アニーがしっかり者に成長して全編にわたりきちんと重要な役割を果たしてくれる。今回は山脈の戦いとかドンパチ騒動もなく、かといって緊張の糸が切れることもなく、作者は真っ直ぐで優しい心根のコークをうまく描いて気持ち良いテンポで読める。最後は「えっ？」という展開で現代若者の苦悩が示唆されているようだ。