Tamarack County: A Novel (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series)
*Starred Review* If Krueger’s publisher had released just one of the scenes in this novel set in the North Woods of Minnesota, the one in which a car spins off an icy road onto the frozen surface of Iron Lake, trapping two young people inside as the ice cracks and water rushes in, the asking price of an entire novel would have been entirely justified. But this is just one of many such scenes of hold-your-breath suspense, heightened by the isolating blizzards of a Minnesota winter and the eerie presence of a stalker. In the thirteenth in Krueger’s series starring Cork O’Connor, the Tamarack County private investigator (and former sheriff) is called in to help find a misanthropic judge’s wife, who has disappeared. That incident is quickly followed by the killing of a woman friend’s dog, with additional evidence indicating that the woman is being stalked. O’Connor is able to trace the incidents to a cold case from more than 20 years before. Complicating matters, O’Connor’s son’s relationship with the embattled woman’s daughter places his son in peril. Because Krueger works in the history of his characters’ relationships in a clear and elegant way, this exceptionally scary suspense story will prove riveting for both newcomers to the series and readers who have followed Cork as he and his family have aged and grown. --Connie Fletcher