Review: Northwest Angle by William Kent Krueger

Title: Northwest Angle

Author: 

William Kent Krueger

Series: Cork O'Connor

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Crime

Publisher: Atria Books

Release Date:

August 30, 2011

Source: Publisher

Pre-order the Book: Amazon

With his family caught in the crosshairs of a group of brutal killers, detective Cork O’Connor must solve the murder of a young girl in the latest installment of William Kent Krueger’s unforgettable New York Times bestselling series.

During a houseboat vacation on the remote Lake of the Woods, a violent gale sweeps through unexpectedly, stranding Cork and his daughter, Jenny, on a devastated island where the wind has ushered in a force far darker and more deadly than any storm.

Amid the wreckage, Cork and Jenny discover an old trapper’s cabin where they find the body of a teenage girl. She wasn’t killed by the storm, however; she’d been bound and tortured before she died. Whimpering sounds coming from outside the cabin lead them to a tangle of branches toppled by the vicious winds. Underneath the debris, they find a baby boy, hungry and dehydrated, but still very much alive. Powerful forces intent on securing the child pursue them to the isolated Northwest Angle, where it’s impossible to tell who among the residents is in league with the devil. Cork understands that to save his family he must solve the puzzle of this mysterious child whom death follows like a shadow.

“Part adventure, part mystery, and all knockout thriller” (Booklist ), Northwest Angle is a dynamic addition to William Kent Krueger’s critically acclaimed, award-winning series.

I am a huge fan of crime stories, full of mystery, police officers and detectives that have to find the murderer, and that they use different methods for getting out the truth. So when I saw this book it caught my attention immediately.

This is the first novel I read by William Kent Krueger, so I didn't know anything about his writing style, and logically this is the first novel in the Cork O'Connor series I read, so at the first time I didn't know the characters (This is the twelfth book in the series) but the good thing about the story is that you end up knowing all the characters, their relationships and a little bit about their story, so you can read it as stand-alone book. 

The plot at the beginning is surprising and unusual, especially because the first part of the story takes place on an island, where the main characters Cork and his daughter Jenny find in a cabin a murdered woman and an abandoned baby. And suddenly they find themselves in an extreme situation of live-and-death. 

I admit that I loved that part and that I really enjoyed it, and also when the author shows us some customs and words of the Native Americans of that specific zone, like the Ojibwe. But after some pages, that originality starts decreasing and the plot ends up becoming into something predictable and boring. In particular those scenes with Jenny and the baby, which at the very first moment were very sweet, but then they became repetitive and predictable; with all the characters repeating all the time that she needed to give the baby to the authorities, etc.

I enjoyed this book, is not the best, but you can try it and maybe you'll like it better. The story is good, but I was waiting for something more stunning and not a drama about children, family relations and religion with just a little bit of mystery. However, I really liked Krueger's writing style, so I hope to read something else by this author.

Good Story!

For more than two decades, William Kent Krueger has made his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and two children. His Cork O'Connor novels, Iron Lake (winner of the 1998 Anthony Award for Best First Novel and the Barry Award), Boundary Waters, Purgatory Ridge, Blood Hollow (winner of the 2004 Anthony Award for Best Novel), Mercy Falls (winner of the 2005 Anthony Award for Best Novel), Copper River (winner of a 2006 Minnesota Book Award) and Thunder Bay (winner of the 2007 Minnesota Book Award for Best Genre Fiction), as well as the political thriller The Devil's Bed, are available from Atria Books. Visit his website.