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Click here to buy Ex-sheriff Cork O’Connor of Aurora, Minnesota, has a foot in both camps when a logging controversy hits his Boundary Waters community on the edge of the Superior National Forest. Karl Lindstrom’s company has logging rights to a section of the forest that includes a grove of old-growth white pines. Called 'Our Grandfathers' by the local Anishinaabe/Ojibwe Indians, the trees are considered sacred to the tribe, which is why they’re protesting about any cutting in the area. Part-Anishinaabe, Cork sympathizes with the Indians while also feeling empathy for the loggers who rely on the forest for their living. Relations between whites and Native Americans become increasingly strained, and the arrival of a group of rabid environmentalists doesn’t help the situation. Joan Hamilton and her son Brent are determined to halt the logging by any means available to them. Injured in a previous environmental battle, Joan is a tough woman who seems unfazed by a bombing that levels a building at the Lindstrom lumber mill. When the body of Charlie Warren, a local Ojibwe, is found in the building’s ruins, the loggers immediately blame the Native Americans for the explosion despite the fact that someone calling himself Eco-Warrior takes responsibility for the crime. Cork’s wife, Jo, the attorney for the Anishinaabe, immediately becomes involved in the case, and as a result, Cork also gets involved. Despite Lindstrom’s subsequent pledge not to cut 'Our Grandfathers', tensions increase in Aurora, fed in great part by Joan Hamilton’s continued presence and the extremist reporting of local newspaperman and militia advocate Helm Hanover. While all this is going on, trouble is brewing in another section of the Boundary Waters. John LePere is part-Native Americans and part-white. A former deckhand on a Great Lakes merchant ship, LePere is the lone survivor of a shipwreck that killed his younger brother years before. Convinced by a fellow diver that the Fitzgerald Shipping Company deliberately sank the Alfred M Teasdale for insurance purposes, LePere has hunted for the remains of the ship for months and has finally found it at the bottom of Lake Superior. Now it seems that someone is out to stop LePere from gathering the evidence he needs to prove the ship was sabotaged. The destruction of his underwater camera and diving equipment forces LePere to make a dangerous deal with the high stakes gambler who’s funded his search for the Teasdale. LePere’s story links with Lindstrom’s when the lumber magnet’s novelist wife is kidnapped by Eco-Warrior. Cork, who is now serving as a bodyguard for Lindstrom, is dragged deeper into the case when Jo also goes missing along with their son Steven. A forest fire that threatens 'Our Grandfathers' throws the FBI off the track of the real Eco-Warrior and complicates the search for both women. It is only when Cork allows his instincts to take precedence over his despair that the clues finally begin to fall into place. Krueger’s third novel is one heck of a good yarn. A complicated plot and equally complicated characters keep the reader guessing until the end despite the author’s fair handling of the clues. As always in a mystery, one must deduce the motive behind the crime in order to unmask the criminal. In this story, several characters have credible motives and it is only by digging deeper that the truth is perceived. Adding to the reader’s delight is the narration of Jerry Sciarrio whose vocal skills individualize the characters and bring believability to the emotions expressed by the major protagonists. All in all, this is a fine recording of an equally fine book, a sure-fire winner that should find favor with fans of the mystery genre.
Reviewed by Mary V. Welk, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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