catrev 's review for:

Vermilion Drift by William Kent Krueger

5.0

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Vermilion Drift by William Kent Krueger is the tenth book in the Cork O'Connor series. Cork is still recovering after his wife Jo's murder and is feeling a bit lost as all of his three children are far from home. No longer sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota, he's now a private investigator, hired to look into threats against an old iron mine that the government is considering as storage for nuclear waste. The local Ojibwa consider him to be betraying his own blood by working on a case that will damage the environment, but things get suddenly much worse when while searching the mine tunnel known as Vermilion Drift, he discovers six bodies, five of whom have been dead for over forty years, but one is the body of a woman he had just been hired to find. Even worse, two of the bodies were killed by a bullet that came from Cork's gun, the one he inherited from his father, another former Tamarack County sheriff. While there is lots of history in this superb mystery, it's not necessary to have read the previous books in the series (although after reading this, I certainly want to), because Krueger expertly weaves Cork's personal history with that of the town. He has a different personality from most detectives; while he does have the usual tendency of going rogue, he's more interested in talking to people and discovering truth than he is meting out personal justice. There are lots of twists and turns as well as red herrings to keep readers guessing and second guessing, and the resolution is satisfying and provides some long-term healing for Cork. Vermilion Drift is suspenseful without being overtly violent, and intelligent without being pretentious. It's a literary mystery with a stand-out hero.