A Novel (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series) - Northwest Angle

William Krueger's books are outstanding and this series is especially good. Great short chapters and fun background information about Minnesota as the setting for all his novels. The book arrived as expected and was in very good condition.

I've loved William Kent Krueger's work since Iron Lake, but I have to say this one disappointed me. In fact, I almost went down to 3 stars.

Religion has always been in the background of the Cork O'Connor stories, and that was fine. But in this book it comes much more to the foreground. If I wanted to read religious fiction - which I don't - I'd search it out. Unfortunately, many of the religious bits seemed to overshadow the great North Woods as a character in this novel. Bringing the setting to life has always been one of Krueger's great strengths, and while he still sets the scene on Lake of the Woods, the Big Deep seems pushed to the background. There are also some aspects of the story that seem rushed. For example, we spend much of the book reading about what a threat Noah Smalldog is believed to be - and then the resolution to Smalldog's story is almost a toss-away.

I still love Cork - hoping that the next novel will return to previous form.

Northwest Angle is an excellent introduction to a part of the US and Canadian border that few have visited. In addition to a lesson in geography, it is a compelling mystery novel. The surprising characters will keep the reader spellbound. Great reading!

This is a good Krueger book. It is somewhat different than what we usually see from Mr. Krueger. It is, as always, well written, the characters are well done, and it all makes for a completely enjoyable book.

Great writing, wonderful characters, culturally diverse. Reading a Cork O'Connor mystery is like going home to people with whom you love to spend time and always learning more about the world around you.

Having read and adored "Ordinary Grace" by Krueger, I picked up this book at the library to see what all the fuss was about with his Cork O'Connor mysteries and was not disappointed. Although part of a series, each book works as a stand-alone, with well-written characters, poetic narrative and realistic dialogue. "Northwest Angle" focuses on the mystery of a murdered young woman and the infant son she left behind on a remote island where Cork and his daughter crash land during a storm. The dynamic between the father and daughter, as well as her mothering instincts, kept me turning pages while the mystery unfolded. This was an enjoyable novel that I didn't want to put down at night.

I vacillate between giving this book two stars and giving it three: I give it three only because Krueger has written some good novels in the past. Now, however, at least with this book, he seems to be continuing the Cork O'Connor books only for the sake of having a title come out each year. This book, which promised excitement with a wild, devastating storm, a baby found on an isolated island, and other such plot incidents, ended up being a big disappointment.

First, even though the storm was devastating, there was actually very little suspense or tension in the scenes. The whole novel seemed to be perfunctory, with no tension, no edginess. And the main part of the plot, which seems as if it should be centered on the question of who murdered Lily Smalldog, actually centers around whether Cork's daughter Jenny will get to keep Lily's baby. The author tries to make Jenny's coveting the baby natural and whole and pure, but to me it seemed an unhealthy fixation, to so desire another person's child -- and to judge everybody else by how they responded to this desire.

On another front, Cork, an experienced lawman, never questions what he is told about who the probable killer is. Come on! I distrusted the information from the beginning, and a law official should have, too. As another reviewer pointed out with a Spoiler Alert, the villain is hardly ever on the page. Hardly. Ever.

On top of all of this is the fact that apparently everybody in Cork O'Connor's family is Goodness personified. This became both cloying and boring. A disappointment.

William Kent Krueger is an excellent author; his writing is cerebral and well organized. In NORTHWEST ANGLE he continues his series featuring Cork O'Conner and his adventures in northern Minnesota. I was engrossed with the story and enjoyed the time I spent traipsing through the Lake of the Woods region. I'm not sure I'd return.

The author's intent, according to an interview, was to present the O'Conners, a family in disarray from a tragedy, trying to pull their relationship together. Outside forces threaten to disrupt the attempt with serious threats, forcing family members to pull together, mend broken rapport, and focus on in-sync survival strategy. Some of it works and some doesn't.

Krueger has a lot of characters in his story. He tries hard to make them authentic and familiar to the reader. But, for the most part, they come across as sketches, somewhat misty entities without depth. Some of them could have been left out of the picture entirely without damaging the premise. Others seemed gratuitous and too desperate in their attempt to fit in with the O'Conner clan. Their purpose is not well defined.

The author's descriptions of the wild country and difficulties of trying to escape deadly pursuit in a land of water and rugged landscape are well done. The main villain is discovered late in the story but is somewhat lame; all mouth and bluster. Krueger needed to provide more menace and terror to the persona of the evil scoundrel.

This book has intriguing elements that are somewhat diminished by confusing character relationships and a weak undercurrent of religious and political opinion. A little more intensity would have raised my rating.

Schuyler T Wallace
Author of TIN LIZARD TALES

Always when I think the Cork O'Connor series just can't get any better, the author William Kent Krueger outdoes himself. This is simply why I read books, this one took me on an adventure I won't soon forget and at some point may have to go back and revisit this book again it was so good. Its set on the most northwest part of the contingent 48 states and involves all the characters of this series that I have come to love! Its a tale about a family (the O'Connors) trying to reconnect on a family vacation in the Northwest Angle on a houseboat. While on vacation a huge storm of hurricane proportion sweeps in and with the aftermath of the storm comes suspense, mystery, and intrigue in which only William Kent Krueger can pen a book! This like all of his books was hard to put down, but like most I didn't want it to come to an end. What a ride and an adventure this book takes you and at the end you can reflect about how you can do amazing things when it comes to family. I think the cover may be wrinkled as I was white knuckling it all the way, as the suspense is high-what a thriller. As always I recommend you to take a journey in his books, but would suggest you start with the first book in his series "Iron Lake" and then enjoy and savor each one in order along the way!

This is the least interesting in the series, and is poorly edited. After a while it seemed that every other page involved sister-in-law Rose praying, and the intervening pages involved daughter Jenny’s attachment to an abandoned baby (including taking something to stimulate her own lactation). Meanwhile, at the end bad-guy Gabriel simply disappears and we don’t know what happened to him, and wise sage Henry who has been seriously ill throughout the book suddenly becomes healthy without explanation.

In the acknowledgments Krueger doesn’t mention his writing group, Crème de la Crime, and maybe those folks should have been consulted to strengthen this novel.

Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor wants a family vacation away from civilization, so he and his loved ones can reconnect after the worst of their grief following his wife's murder has passed. With him on a rented houseboat in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota, on the U.S./Canadian Border, are his daughters, journalist Jenny and aspiring nun Anne; his teenaged son, Stephen; his dead wife's sister, Rose; and Rose's husband, Mal. Jenny's partner (not quite her fiance, it seems), a farmer and poet named Aaron, is on his way to join them when Cork and Jenny take a side trip to an island that not many people know about. Cork knows about it because Ojibwe medicine man Henry Meloux, perhaps his oldest and dearest friend, took him there long ago and showed him pictographs left by the People. Cork is part Ojibwe himself, and he has his reasons for choosing now to share this part of that heritage with Jenny. Who isn't a bit receptive - Cork knows he's blown it as father and daughter retreat from the island, to continue their outboard trip to Northwest Angle and pick up Aaron for a return to the houseboat. That's when a freak weather system called a derecho strikes without warning. Straight line winds of hurricane force tear the forest apart, destroy the little boat, and separate Jenny from Cork. Afterward, as she seeks shelter on the island, Jenny discovers a damaged cabin that hides the tortured and murdered body of a teenaged girl. In the woods nearby, a baby's wail draws Jenny to the child's hiding place. Did the young mother die to keep her son safe from her killers? Jenny thinks so. The baby is clearly Native American, and he has a cleft palate. Jenny takes one look and falls in love.

This mystery/adventure/suspense novel takes all of the surviving members of Cork O'Connor's family and gives each plenty of "screen time" as the plot plays out. That plot works well; and although crazed religious zealots are all too familiar a device, they are also all too frequently perpetrators of real world violence. Beyond that, it's hard to say much about the rest of the story without spoiling it. Which I wouldn't do for anything! Cork and his loved ones move beyond their grieving here, and a new life starts for them both as individuals and as a family. Highly recommended.

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of 2005 science fiction EPPIE winner "Regs"

Befitting its location, this novel is a dark, brooding, exploration of family values and relationships. It also carries a healthy dose of religiosity, on both the dark and the lighter side. These are themes Krueger injects in greater and greater amounts as the Cork O'Connor series proceedes. Whether his fans will follow him here, remains to be seen. As always, the language is beautiful, the setting is fascinating and the carefully crafted characters true to form and to the story.
The Northwest Angle of Minnesota is a geographical oddity, brought about by surveying errors in 1793. It's a piece of the United States which cannot be reached by land without traveling through Canada. By water, it's another story. The Angle has a long shoreline on one of the large lakes that form a surprising amount of the border between the U.S. and Canada, in this case, Lake of the Woods. Travel on the water between the two countries, without benefit of Customs oversight on either side of the border is easy, if you are so inclined, and used to functioning in the out-of-doors.
Once again Cork O'Connor tries to bring calm and understanding to his life by collecting his immediate family together for a house-boating trip on Lake of the Woods. Part of his motivation for this trip is to give him an opportunity to meddle, in his ham-handed way, with his eldest daughter and her personal plans. Nature, in the form of a vast and terrible storm, forces a significant alteration in Cork's plan. He and Jenny are storm-bound on a devastated island where they stumble across a horrible murder and a live infant. These discoveries put them in the sights of an assortment of people with evil intentions.
While the grim tone persists through much of the novel, it's overall message is one of hope and uplift, of the triumph of essential good. The author's writing remains masterful and readers will take away some thought-provoking questions.

First I have to congratulate the author on writing so powerfully about the storm at the beginning of the book. I lived through a very similar storm many years ago and his writing powerfully and accurately captured my memories.

The book starts promisingly but tends to peter out. It didn't help that I figured out the storyline almost immediately and so slogged through the rest of the book with increasing annoyance at how dumb the characters were being.

All in all, the story felt like Krueger went back to the foundations of his character's history (Aurora, Henry's cabin, etc.) one too many times. Heaven's Reach was absolutely brilliant in large part because it dragged the character away from his usual points of reference. Come to think of it, I loved Copper River for the same reason.

Cork O'Connor is a great character but his story has outgrown small town northern Minnesota. Krueger made a great effort at telling one last story in Aurora but it fell short. If you are interested in continuing the series, I can recommend the first 100 pages and the last 20.

This is the eleventh book in the multi-award-winning Cork O'Connor series, and it is another winner. It starts out, as do the others, in the North Woods of Minnesota, described by the author as "a land so beautiful it's as near to heaven as you're likely to find anywhere on this earth." And the reader is more than convinced of that as [s]he continues to read, for the author's wonderful prose brings it vividly to life in all its majesty.

Family is all-important to Cork, and as the novel opens he and his family - his two daughters, Ann, twenty-one, and Jenny, a writer twenty-four years old; his son, nearly fifteen; and his sister-in-law and her husband - are about to embark in a houseboat on one of the larges lakes in North America, straddling the US/Canadian border, on what he envisions as a family gathering, the first in the nearly two years since his beloved wife had died. Their destination was a remote area known as the Northwest Angle. Within less than an hour, however, a devastating storm arises, threatening to kill anything and anyone in its path, with waves over eight feet high and winds over 100 mph, wreaking havoc and destruction unlike anything they'd even seen.

As suddenly as it began, the storm soon passes, but in its aftermath and where the vagaries of the area have deposited them, on one of a myriad of small islands, they discover an old trapper's cabin, inside which they find the body of a young girl, brutally killed, and, nearby, an infant who appears to be no more than a few weeks old. Jenny is immediately taken with the child, who though hungry and dehydrated is none the worse for his abandonment. The reaction of the others is somewhat more ambivalent as to his future, and the possibilities raised by his presence among them and its potential threat, for it appears that whoever was responsible for the girl's death is still stalking the area. Cork, with his background as a Chicago cop and a Sheriff for more than a decade before he became a p.i., is faced with getting them safely off the island, and finding out who is responsible for the girl's death, as well as seeing that the baby's future is dealt with.

The ensuing events are never less than harrowing. The mystery is one not easily solved, but the O'Connor family, with the help of their old friend Henry Meloux, is not easily deterred. Cork's - and the author's - love of the wilderness, and his philosophy towards life and family, is made manifest, e.g., "he was reminded that life was no more predictable than the flight of a dragonfly" and "love is the only river I know whose current flows both ways." The book is deeply satisfying, and deeply moving. Highly recommended.