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Blood Hollow: A Novel (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series Book 4) by [William Kent Krueger]

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William Kent Krueger

Blood Hollow: A Novel (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series Book 4) Kindle Edition

by William Kent Krueger (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Book 4 of 19: Cork O'Connor Mystery

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When a high school student’s body is found and her boyfriend goes missing, tough-as-nails former sheriff Cork O’Connor is forced into the center of an eerie mystery with a shocking twist in this “vivid and realistic” (Booklist), Anthony Award-winning novel from New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger.

When the body of a beautiful high school student is discovered on a hillside four months after her disappearance on New Year’s Eve, all evidence points to her boyfriend, local bad boy Solemn Winter Moon. Despite Solemn’s self-incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O’Connor isn’t about to hang the crime on a kid he’s convinced is innocent.

In an uphill battle to clear Solemn’s name, Cork encounters no shortage of adversity. Some—like bigotry and bureaucracy—he knows all too well. What Cork isn’t prepared for is the emergence of a long-held resentment from his own childhood. And when Solemn reappears, claiming to have seen a vision of Jesus Christ in Blood Hollow, the mystery becomes thornier than Cork could ever have anticipated. And that's when the miracles start happening.

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544 pages
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Atria Books
Publication date

February 3, 2004
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Great Spirit! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. Mother Earth! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. You are our mother. You feed us, you clothe us, you shelter us, and you comfort us. For this we thank you and honor you.
Highlighted by 147 Kindle readers
Whenever hope packed its bag and left for good, all that remained was a terrible emptiness, immeasurably sad.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Krueger has moved to the head of the crime fiction class with this one." (Chicago Sun-Times)

“Writing as a naturalist, Krueger draws on Indian legends to communicate the mystery of the north woods; writing as a humanist, he looks to the spirits of the ancients to heal all wounds.” (New York Times Book Review)

"Heart-stopping.... Krueger is at the top of his form." (St. Paul Pioneer Press)

“[A] chilling story with a warm heart… Krueger skillfully crafts enough plot twists to keep everybody guessing through the bloody climax to the thrilling end.” (Publishers Weekly)

About the Author

William Kent Krueger is the New York Times bestselling author of This Tender Land, Ordinary Grace (winner of the Edgar Award for best novel), as well as nineteen acclaimed books in the Cork O’Connor mystery series, including Lightning Strike and Desolation Mountain. He lives in the Twin Cities with his family. Learn more at WilliamKentKrueger.com.

From Publishers Weekly

In his fourth Cork O'Connor mystery (after 2001's Purgatory Ridge), Krueger tells a chilling story with a warm heart. O'Connor, the prickly ex-sheriff of the small town of Aurora, Minn., finds himself in conflict with the new, politically motivated sheriff, Arne Soderberg, when Charlotte Kane, a beautiful but reckless teen, disappears on a drunken snowmobile ride during a New Year's Eve party. A Minnesota blizzard thwarts the search, and decidedly unspiritual O'Connor returns to civilization troubled by supernatural visions in the blinding snowfall. Kane's body doesn't surface until the spring thaw, and then questions about her death arise: the autopsy and evidence at the scene point to murder, and the most likely suspect is Solemn Winter Moon, her brooding, rebellious ex-boyfriend, a lothario from the Ojibwe reservation who has a bad reputation with the citizens of Aurora. Anti-Native prejudice gives way to spiritual controversy when Winter Moon turns himself in after claiming to have seen Christ while seeking a vision from Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit. Skeptical of Winter Moon's religious claims but determined to prove his innocence, O'Connor uncovers twisted family drama, frightening religious fervor and suspicious infidelities. Krueger skillfully crafts enough plot twists to keep everybody guessing through the bloody climax to the thrilling end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

The Corcoran O'Connor series deserves a larger audience. Cork O'Connor, former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota (he now owns a burger joint called Sam's Place), is one of crime fiction's more interesting series leads, and Krueger's dead-on depiction of a rural American town is as vivid and realistic as any in the genre. This time out, Cork gets involved in the investigation of a young woman's murder and, as usual, must rely on his own investigative experience to do what the authorities can't: solve the case. But the mystery is only part of the draw here. What sets the novel (and the series) apart from the rank-and-file is the way Krueger tells the story, layering on the details, slowly revealing the relationships between characters, parceling out information a piece at a time. In this first-rate entry in an underappreciated series, Krueger does for rural Minnesota what Steven Havill does, in his Posadas County novels, for small-town New Mexico. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

January, as usual, was meat locker cold, and the girl had already been missing for nearly two days. Corcoran O'Connor couldn't ignore the first circumstance. The second he tried not to think about.

He stood in snow up to his ass, more than two feet of drifted powder blinding white in the afternoon sun. He lifted his tinted goggles and glanced at the sky, a blue ceiling held up by green walls of pine. He stood on a ridge that overlooked a small oval of ice called Needle Lake, five miles from the nearest maintained road. Aside from the track his snowmobile had pressed into the powder, there was no sign of human life. A rugged vista lay before him -- an uplifted ridge, a jagged shoreline, a bare granite pinnacle that jutted from the ice and gave the lake its name -- but the recent snowfall had softened the look of the land. In his time, Cork had seen nearly fifty winters come and go. Sometimes the snow fell softly, sometimes it came in a rage. Always it changed the face of whatever it touched. Cork couldn't help thinking that in this respect, snow was a little like death. Except that death, when it changed a thing, changed it forever.

He took off his mittens, deerskin lined with fleece. He turned back to the Polaris snowmobile that Search and Rescue had provided for him, and he pulled a radio transmitter from the compartment behind the seat. When he spoke through the mouth hole of his ski mask, his words ghosted against the radio in a cloud of white vapor.

"Unit Three to base. Over."

"This is base. Go ahead, Cork."

"I'm at Needle Lake. No sign of her. I'm going to head up to Hat Lake. That'll finish this section."

"I copy that. Have you seen Bledsoe?"

"That's a negative."

"He completed the North Arm trail and was going to swing over to give you a hand. Also, be advised that the National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning. A blizzard's coming our way. Sheriff's thinking of pulling everybody in."

Cork O'Connor had lived in the Northwoods of Minnesota most of his life. Although at the moment there was only a dark cloud bank building in the western sky, he knew that in no time at all the weather could turn.

"Ten-four, Patsy. I'll stay in touch. Unit Three out."

He'd been out since first light, and despite the deerskin mittens, the Sorel boots and thick socks, the quilted snowmobile suit, the down parka, and the ski mask, he was cold to the bone. He put the radio back, lifted a Thermos from the compartment under the seat of the Polaris, and poured a cup of coffee. It was only lukewarm, but it felt great going down his throat. As he sipped, he heard the sound of another machine cutting through the pines to his right. In a minute, a snowmobile broke through a gap in the trees, and shot onto the trail where Cork's own machine sat idle. Oliver Bledsoe buzzed up beside Cork and killed the engine. He dismounted and pulled off his ski mask.

"Heard you on the radio with Patsy," Bledsoe said. "Knew I'd catch you here." He cast a longing look at Cork's coffee. "Got any left?"

"Couple swallows," Cork said. He poured the last of the coffee into the cup and offered it to Bledsoe. "All yours."

"Thanks."

Bledsoe was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe. He was large, muscular, a hair past fifty, with a wide, honest face and warm almond eyes. Although he was now an attorney and headed the legal affairs office for the tribal council, in his early years he'd worked as a logger and he knew this area well. Cork was glad to have him there.

Bledsoe stripped off his gloves and wrapped his hands around the warm cup. He closed his eyes to savor the coffee as it coursed down his throat. "Anything?" he asked.

"Nothing," Cork said.

"Lot of ground to cover." Bledsoe handed the cup back and glanced north where the wilderness stretched all the way to Canada. "It's a shame, nice girl like her, something like this." He dug beneath his parka and brought out a pack of Chesterfields and Zippo lighter. He offered a cigarette to Cork, who declined. He lit up, took a deep breath, and exhaled a great white cloud of smoke and wet breath. He put his gloves back on and let the cigarette dangle from the corner of his mouth. Nodding toward the sky in the west, he said, "You hear what's coming in? If that girl didn't have bad luck, she'd have no luck at all."

Cork heard the squawk of his radio and picked it up.

"Base to all units. It's official. We've got us a blizzard on the doorstep. A real ass kicker, looks like. Come on in. Sheriff says he doesn't want anyone else lost out there."

Cork listened as one by one the other units acknowledged.

"Unit Three. Unit Four. Did you copy? Over."

"This is Unit Three. Bledsoe's with me. We copy, Patsy. But listen. I still haven't checked Hat Lake. I'd like to have a quick look before I head back."

"Negative, Cork. Sheriff says turn around now. He's pulling in the dogs and air search, too. Weather service says it's not a storm to mess with."

"Is Wally there?"

"He won't tell you anything different."

"Put him on."

Cork waited.

"Schanno, here. This better be good."

Cork could see him, Sheriff Wally Schanno. Grim, harried. With a missing girl, a whale of a blizzard, and a recalcitrant ex-sheriff on his hands.

"I'm just shy of Hat Lake, Wally. I'm going to check it out before I turn back."

"The hell you are. Have you taken a good look behind you?"

Glancing back to the west, toward the cloud bank that was now looming high above the tree line, Cork knew time was short.

"It would be a shame to come this far and not make it that last mile."

"Bring yourself in. That's an order."

"What are you going to do if I don't? Fire me? I'm a volunteer."

"You want to stay on Search and Rescue, you'll come back now. You read me, Unit Three?"

"Loud and clear, Sheriff."

"Good. I expect to see you shortly. Base out."

Schanno sounded weary deep down in his soul. Cork knew that the sheriff would turn away from the radio to face the family of the missing girl, having just reduced significantly the chances of finding her alive. For Cork, being out there in the cold and the snow with a blizzard at his back was infinitely preferable to what Sheriff Wally Schanno had to deal with. Once again, he was exceedingly glad that the badge he himself had once worn was now pinned to the chest of another man.

"Guess that about does it," Oliver Bledsoe said.

"I'm going to check Hat Lake."

"You heard the sheriff."

"I've got to know, Ollie."

Bledsoe nodded. "You want a hand?"

"No. You go on back. I won't be more than half an hour behind you."

"Schanno'll skin you alive."

"I'll take my chances with Wally."

Cork climbed onto the seat, kicked the engine over, and shot east in a roar of sparkling powder.

He hated snowmobiles. Hated the noise, a desecration of the silence of the deep woods that was to him a beauty so profound it felt sacred. Hated the kind of people snowmobiling brought, people who looked at the woods as they would an amusement park, just another diversion in the never-ending battle against boredom. Hated the ease with which the machines allowed access to a wilderness that could swallow the ignorant and unwary without a trace. The only value he could see in a snowmobile was that it allowed him, in a situation like this, to cover a large area quickly.

By the time he reached Hat Lake, the dark wall of cloud behind him stretched north and south from horizon to horizon, completely blotting out the late afternoon sun. The sight gave Cork chills that had nothing to do with the temperature. He found no sign of a snowmobile on the trail that circled the lake. Exactly what he'd suspected, but he wanted to be certain. The wind rose at his back. He watched ghosts of snow swirl up and pirouette across the lake ice. Except for the dancing snow and the trees as they bent to the rising wind, nothing moved. Not one flicker of life across the whole, frigid face of that land.

Copyright © 2004 by William Kent Krueger --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000FC103Y
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Reprint edition (February 3, 2004)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 3, 2004
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5958 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0743445864
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #20,677 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews:
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William Kent Krueger

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Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers.

"Ordinary Grace," his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. "Manitou Canyon," number fifteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in September 2016. Visit his website at www.williamkentkrueger.com.

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Richard C. Reynolds

A first rate mystery

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2016

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Former Tamarack Country Sheriff Cork O’Connor isn’t comfortable sitting around the house or flipping burgers for hungry tourists at his lakeside lunch shack. When a young woman named Charlotte Kane goes missing after a New Years Eve party, Cork joins the search and rescue mission and heads out into a classic Minnesota snowstorm. The woman’s corpse turns up four months later and circumstantial evidence for her murder points to a young Ojibwe Indian man named Solemn Winter Moon.
Cork believes that Solemn is innocent and enlists the help of Jo, his wife and a practicing attorney, to help with Solemn’s defense. This stirs up considerable ill will towards the trio because the citizens of Aurora have already convicted Solemn in their hearts and minds. There is no shortage of other likely suspects such as Charlotte’s angry father and a Catholic priest with a suspicious background. Cork takes on the roles of private detective and “defense consultant” to his wife, investigating others in the community who might have motive and opportunity to kill Charlotte.
This book is the fourth novel I’ve read in Krueger’s Cork Corcoran mystery series and it’s the best of the lot. He weaves a complex story with many fascinating characters to enjoy along the way. We also get some rich details about Cork, Jo, and the children of the Corcoran family that make the experience that much more enjoyable.
About half way into the book I thought I’d figured out who the guilty party was but I was totally wrong. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way with surprises popping up at the most unlikely points. It’s only when you reach the end of the book that Krueger reveals who the murderer is.
Once you read the first several pages of this book, you’ll have a devilish time putting it aside.

6 people found this helpful

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Lee Wall

Frustrating investigation and investigator

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2018

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I had read the previous books in this series and could not remember why I had stopped. Shortly after starting this one I may have discovered the problem: Cork is a little slow. He brags about how he’s a sheriff at heart, suspicious and curious, but in truth he misses a lot. I saw numerous red flags, but he saw...nothing. Time and time again I was thinking he should have noticed something, asked something, pursued something, but he was oblivious. Sometimes he circled back eventually, and sometimes another character just flat out told him what he’d missed. And he’d think something like, “That makes sense.” I did think that I could predict how the story would go, but in this I was surprised. The plot got quite complicated and unexpected. But that’s not always a good thing.

3 people found this helpful

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MME, Texas reader

Lesser entry in the Cork O'Connor series.

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2011

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In this, the 4th of the Cork O'Connor series, the story opens in the deep freeze of a Minnesota winter with a search for the missing daughter of a wealthy resident of Aurora, where former sheriff Cork O'Connor lives with his family and runs a burger joint. Months later, the spring thaws reveal a body: the missing girl, along with some questionable evidence found nearby. At the request of a friend, and in spite of disapproval from the newly elected sheriff, Cork gets involved in the investigation, anxious to protect the rights of the only suspect, Solemn Winter Moon, a troubled young half Indian who was romantically involved with the dead girl. As Cork discovers, secrets and lies abound, complicating his efforts to know the truth about the crime, the victim, her family, the suspect, the law in Aurora, and even threats to his own family. Raised Catholic, Cork has long struggled with a crisis of faith, and in this novel, he comes full face on with what it means to believe. Or not.

One of Krueger's great gifts in writing this series is his ability to portray the landscape and atmosphere of Cork O'Connor's Minnesota. Place becomes another character in these novels....but not so much in Blood Hollow. Even the wine colored stream that provides the title seems meagerly evoked and unimportant, a throwaway description. While the murderer was apparent, at least to me, early on, much of the mystery is confusing and incomprehensible. One character's disappearance years earlier is never solved, and the motive, though explained, seems more than a little incredible. Some of the characters, too, are merely outlines, without enough depth to make us care about them or even believe in them.

Blood Hollow does not equal Krueger's earlier O'Connor entries, in my opinion. However, the man can write, so I look forward to moving on to Mercy Falls, next in the lineup.

6 people found this helpful

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dreamst8

Nice steady read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2017

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It's a good book, keeps you guessing and doesn't reveal its secret til near the end. Well worth your time.

Kindle Customer

William Kent Kruger

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2017

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All books are excellent and a good read. I have read six and just stars Thunder Bay trilogy

Alan

Blood Hollow

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2012

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I read my first Cork O'Connor story a while ago having picked up a second hand paperback for holiday reading at 20p Thoroughly enjoyed it so decided to try another on the Kindle. Every bit as good as my first experience of this author and setting.

John Scotney

Blood Hollow Review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2013

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Started reading this author last year and found the Cork O'Connor mysteries riveting. I am continuing to purchase and read the series.

Pentimenta

Reviewed in Germany on November 29, 2017

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Krueger's books are just so I keep wanting to read the next one (so far). In this one the main character, who is actually a rather quiet and self effacing guy, kept meddling in police affairs a way which I thought annoying. Also, the law enforcement officers wouldn't have suffered it, and rightly so. Krueger should reinstate him as sheriff because this out-of-character meddling was the only way the author could ensure his hero had the information that allowed the story to take place. Awkward writer's sleigh-of-hand.

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