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In the first two Cork O'Connor books Krueger displayed wonderful descriptive powers with his depictions of Minnesota in winter's frozen grip. With Purgatory Ridge he moves into Summer, and takes the reader into the middle of violent electrical storms and forest fires, descriptions so real that you can almost feel the heat coming from the burning pine trees. Krueger excels with his settings, from the calmer waters of Iron Lake to the icy depths of Lake Superior, the native pine forests to the town of Aurora, he makes me feel as though I know these places as well as my own home. But of course setting isn't everything. Purgatory Ridge is a formation on the edge of Lake Superior, and the place that has been John LePere's home for most of his life. LePere is the only survivor of the 1986 shipwreck that took his brother's life, and he is still looking for answers from a wreck that lies at the bottom of the great lake. Meanwhile a logging company has gained the rights to harvest a stand of white pine trees known as the Old Grandfathers, and sacred to the Anishinaabe people. When an eco-terrorist claims responsibility for an explosion at the lumber yard tensions run high between the loggers, the ecologists, and the Native Americans. Krueger weaves a complex plot around these elements and, as a kidnapping worsens the situation, Cork O'Connor becomes personally involved. Cork O'Connor is an ex-sheriff and part Anishinaabe himself. His background and contacts give him an insight that the other investigators lack, and he becomes involved on the fringes of the investigation. His wife Jo is involved as a lawyer for the Anishinaabe, and when events take a nasty turn and his family is threatened Cork will do whatever it takes to protect them. The recurring series characters are back, but mostly in relatively minor roles in a book which focuses more on the families involved in the kidnapping. I was pleased, however, to see a slightly bigger role for Henry Meloux, the delightful tribal elder and shaman whom Cork turns to for advice. Much of Purgatory Ridge hinges around a seemingly improbable coincidence, and there are times when the plot seems to be almost running out of control. As events move towards their conclusion the suspense is well maintained, the narrative fairly races along, and then Krueger manages to pull all the threads together in one of the best endings that I have read in a long while. No mean achievement at a time when I seem to be encountering a lot of poor endings. Purgatory Ridge is a suberb book in a superb series. It stands quite well on it's own, but I do recommend that you start from the beginning if at all possible. Krueger just seems to keep getting better and better with each book. I don't know if he can keep it up, but I certainly intend to be first in the queue to find out when the next book is released.
Reviewed by Paul Richmond, July 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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