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Cork O'Connor has known Jubal Little almost all his life; they met when Cork was in the sixth grade. They played high school football together. They loved the same girl. They were friends, although the friendship changed over the years, as they so often do. Cork spent the last three hours of Jubal's life listening to Jubal talk. No good deed goes unpunished. Because Cork did not go for help when he found Jubal with an arrow in his heart, Cork is now the main suspect in Jubal's murder. The people who know Cork either know he didn't do it, or are pretty sure he didn't do it. Agent Phil Holter from the BCA, sent in to investigate because Jubal Little was something of a political star, would love for Cork to be guilty. Easy case, lots of publicity - good for a man's career. This makes the local police have to do everything by the book. It will do Cork no good to be off the hook if the investigation isn't squeaky clean. Cork knows that the killer is someone in the community. The evidence that points to Cork points to someone who knows Cork very well. One of the many questions Cork has to answer is basic to his enquiries: Was Jubal the intended victim, or was it Cork? Either way, the suspect pool is pretty much the same. The pool is wider if Jubal was meant to die; he has political enemies as well as personal ones. Some of the political battles are personal as well, which goes to motive. In Krueger's last book, NORTHWEST ANGLE, nature is a violent, angry, destructive element. The characters in the book, at least some of them, echo that element in their natures. TRICKSTER'S POINT shows us another facet of nature: the calming, awesome, restorative power of what is there for everyone who takes the time to see and appreciate it. One of the characters states that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Cork uses this when looking at suspects, and uses the world around him as he ponders who fears Jubal the most, who has the most to gain by getting rid of that fear. Krueger is one of the most under-rated mystery writers around. His characters are people one might know, if not in physical description then in personality and morality. His descriptions of Cork's world are wonderful in that the reader absorbs them without being distracted by them. His motives make sense, his criminals make sense, and his underlying moral sense rings true. He can tell a story with the best of them. And he just keeps getting better. § P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, August 2012
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