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Cork O'Connor is alone this summer. His wife, Jo, died over a year ago and his three children are all away from home involved in various activities. Max Cavanaugh, owner of many iron ore mines in this part of Minnesota, hires Cork to find his sister, Lauren, who has inexplicably vanished. Threats against Cavanaugh and other executives of the company are also being made because the United States Department of Energy is considering storing nuclear waste in one of the abandoned mines. The site abuts the Anishinabe Indian reservation and many of the Indians are protesting the storage of nuclear waste, picketing the main entrance to the company. In tracing the threats, O'Connor makes a gruesome discovery that goes back to a time forty years before, a time remembered as The Vanishing, when four Anishinabe women and girls disappeared. Cork was forced to look back at his father and mother and remember a pivotal moment in his young life. Cork's father was the town sheriff at the time and died in a gun fight with a criminal. Before that he had tried very hard to discover what had happened to the missing women, but failed. In a very satisfying conclusion, Cork learns the answers and discovers some important and disturbing things about himself. As always, Krueger's writing is wonderful. He paints a picture for the reader (or in this case the listener) of the natural world around Cork. We see the brilliant blue lakes, the deep green Northern forests, the dusty roads, the trim, neat streets of the small town. And we see the giant and grotesque scars made by the mining industry, some of them open pit mines where huge bulldozers dig out the earth to get at the iron ore. Others net deep into the earth and we travel down into one with Cork. The natural setting comes alive as this book progresses. Equally well done are the characters. Those who have followed Cork O'Connor since he first appeared in IRON LAKE know him as a courageous, intelligent, but flawed human being. Justice is very important to him, but family is even more important. Losing his wife has scarred him deeply. But he is competent and, because he is part Native, he has a very nice rapport with the inhabitants of the reservation. Henry Melux, the old Indian who has been his mentor, is a wise man who uses the Indian beliefs to help O'Connor find insight. The other characters, including the murderers, are not so completely delineated, but still come alive to the reader. The story is fascinating. The reader will see something of the history of iron ore mining in Minnesota while at the same time realizing the dilemma facing those who would protect the land and those who need to deal with the results of what has necessarily been done to the land. This is a more personal book than many of the earlier ones because Cork is not just a detective, but must investigate his own past and challenge assumptions he has always had about his father. Alone except for his dog, he is forced to confront himself, which is not always an easy task. There is mystery aplenty in this book and those who read or listen to it will find an excellent story as well as a deeper understanding of the man Cork O'Connor has become. It is unfortunate that such a fine book is being read by a relatively inept reader, Buck Schirner. He does not sound right for O'Connor. His attempt at a Minnesota accent comes out all wrong. He has the sheriff dropping her "g's" as though this were typical of Minnesota and one character sounds like he has an Irish brogue. The reader was very disappointing for me. However, even an inept reader can not ruin an outstanding book such as this. The story was intriguing, the characters multi-dimensional, and the setting superbly described. § Sally Fellows is a retired history teacher with a M.A. in history and an avid reader of mysteries.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, October 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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