World Famous Comics: Thunder Bay: A Cork O'Connor Mystery
Thunder Bay: A Cork O'Connor Mystery
By: William Kent Krueger Publisher: Pocket Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Pocket Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 416 Publication Date: June 24, 2008
From acclaimed author William Kent Krueger comes the seventh profound, action-packed suspense novel in his award-winning Cork O'Conner mystery series.
The promise, as I remember it, happened this way.
Happy and content in his hometown of Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O'Connor has left his badge behind and is ready for a life of relative peace, setting up shop as a private investigator. But his newfound state of calm is soon interrupted when Henry Meloux, the Ojibwe medicine man and Cork's spiritual adviser, makes a request: Will Cork find the son that Henry fathered long ago?
With little to go on, Cork uses his investigative skills to locate Henry Wellington, a wealthy and reclusive industrialist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When a murder attempt is made on old Meloux's life, all clues point north across the border. But why would Wellington want his father dead? This question takes Cork on a journey through time as he unravels the story of Meloux's 1920s adventure in the ore-rich wilderness of Canada, where his love for a beautiful woman, far outside his culture, led him into a trap of treachery, greed, and murder.
The past and present collide along the rocky shores of Thunder Bay, where a father's unconditional love is tested by a son's deeply felt resentment, and where jealousy and revenge remain the code among men. As Cork hastens to uncover the truth and save his friend, he soon discovers that his own life is in danger and is reminded that the promises we keep - even for the best of friends - can sometimes place us in the hands of our worst enemies.
Thunder Bay Another Krueger hit. An excellent character study with an appropriate amount of action and romance.
Great book!!!! I always feel like I've just returned from a visit to Northern Minnesota when I finish a Cork O'Connor book.
Loved Thunder Bay! Sat down to read for awhile yesterday evening and read the entire book from cover to cover before heading for bed.
WKK's character descriptions are so good I feel that I know these people -I'm not just reading about them. His descriptions of the North Woods make me feel like I'm on that trail, in that canoe, climbing that rocky cliff, driving down that dusy road!
Really, really liked reading Henry's story. I've always loved Henry, now I feel like I know him.
I always look forward to the next book - they just keep getting better and better - and hope that WKK continues to write about Cork and his family for many years to come.
books Can't wait until September when his new book comes out. His books get better and better, being from MN and having traveled up the north shore to Thunder Bay it was so exciting to read about things we had seen. You won't regret reading any of his books
BREAKS NEW GROUND Full disclosure here; Krueger and I often travel together, we're friends and I'm a great admirer of his writing. I'm talking about the award winning Cork O'Connor series, of which this is the sixth. So, readers of this review should be forewarned.
This is a dynamite novel, although not as powerful, perhaps as the previous Mercy Falls. In this latest, the author has reconnected Cork to his family and his roots, that is, Aurora Minnesota, somewhere up in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota. He's trying to leave law enforcement to others, organizing a small-town business as a restraunteer in the summer with a little private snooping on the side and in the slow months.
Of course, old friends present new challenges. Henry Meloux, long-time friend, resident Ojibwe medicine man of uncertain age is hospitalized with what appears to be serious heart trouble. Near death, Meloux prevails on Cork to try to find Meloux's son, whom no one in Aurora or on the Reservation had known existed.
So what we have here is a moving and sensitive tale of youthful love, lust and loss in which Krueger ably examines racial, class and generational conflicts. He does so within the fabric of a swiftly paced, rousing adventure that spans international boundaries and several decades. The novel is competently written and the themes of a man searching for another's offspring play out effectively against his own family relationships.
Uncommonly profound In his retirement from the sheriff's department, Cork O'Connor runs a lakeside snack shack and enjoys a quiet life in Aurora, Minnesota. But he can't sell enough fries to send his older daughter Jenny to college next fall, and he's obtained his private investigators license to supplement the family bank account. Jenny's intense romance with Sean concerns both Cork and his wife Jo, and it turns out they have reason to be worried.
But Cork hasn't the luxury to deal with Jenny's tragedy head on, because of the trouble that comes to him. Henry Meloux, an ancient Ojibwe medicine man whom Cork has known and revered for 40 years, enters the hospital with chest pain. When Cork rushes to see him, Henry has a request: find the son no one knew he had, a son who Henry has never even met, a son whose name he doesn't even know. All Cork has to go on is the mother's name, Henry's suspicion that the son is somewhere near Ontario, Canada, and a gold pocket watch with the woman's picture.
Thus begins a quest that takes us deeply into Henry's story --- the story of a young Ojibwe orphan, conscripted into an American Indian school, forbidden to speak his own language and forced into labor on a farm; the story of how this young man escapes and learns from his uncle to live off the land; and the story of how he meets Maria Lima deep in the Canadian wilderness, an impetuous and intelligent Cuban beauty traveling with her father, one of two gold prospectors, for whom Henry serves as a guide. Violence and greed separate Henry and Maria, but not before they fall deeply in love.
Now, 70 years later, Henry must bear the news that Maria married the other prospector, Leonard Wellington. Yet she named her first son, who was born only two months after their marriage, Henry. When Cork finds the grown-up Henry, a Howard Hughes-style recluse on an island up in Thunder Bay, his hopes for organizing a reunion between father and son fade. The man is a fanatic. He's not interested in entertaining the notion that his father was an "Indian buck." But back home in Minnesota, Henry's heart problems vanish now that he knows his son is alive and needs him. He insists that Cork take him to Canada, and Cork, because he owes so much to Henry, cannot say no.
It's an exciting and gripping story, and as a bonus, the characterization and writing transcend the usual standards of genre fiction. Krueger conveys much through his use of vivid detail. Here's his description of Henry Wellington's bodyguard: "I saw that he was hard all over, well muscled, with a broad chest, narrow waist, thick arms, and a neck like a section of concrete pillar. He wore sunglasses and didn't remove them. I saw myself small, approaching in their reflection." To add to the menace, when they arrive in Wellington's chamber, the television is showing an open heart surgery. "The bloody hands on the television gripped the heart, and I was afraid maybe they were going to pull it out of the body. The screen went black. I didn't mind."
And yet, the novel is about more than greed, betrayal and suspense. It's about relationships --- between father and son, and between father and daughter. And it is here that Krueger shines. When Henry finally sees his son, Cork notes the old man's uncertainty. "To be a son, to be a father, these things were more than just a blood tie. Maybe that's what the hesitation was about. Did the relationship matter if, in the end, Wellington didn't give a damn?"
The story of Cork and his own family's crisis makes a nice counterpoint to the mystery of Henry Meloux, and Krueger juggles them well. For a "thriller" THUNDER BAY has uncommonly profound, mature and moving things to say about love. You will burn through this book, relishing the twists and turns. But perhaps, if you're like this jaded reviewer, the biggest surprise will be your leaky eyes on the final page.
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