William Kent Krueger - Blood Hollow (2004)
Minnesota writer William Kent Krueger has been steadily building his reputation as one of the better, although lesser-known, crime fiction writers over the past several years. His work in the Corcoran O'Connor series, plus last year's stand-alone thriller, The Devil's Bed, has generally been quite good, and deserving of more recognition than it's gotten.
The latest book featuring O'Connor, the Irish American-Ojibwe Indian former police chief of Aurora, Minn., takes Krueger's work to an entirely new level. Better than merely good, Blood Hollow is a brilliant, layered and moving mystery, one of the better efforts of this or any year.
O'Connor is moved to investigate a case involving the murder of a troubled young white woman and the Native American accused of the crime. Cork believes in the young man's innocence even when no one else does, and pursues the hunt for the real killer despite opposition from the police and others in the town.
The prose in Blood Hollow is so good and the plotting so deft that readers will be hard put to stop reading once they begin. Krueger has moved to the head of the crime fiction class with this one.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink
