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Iron Lake: A Novel (1) (Cork O'Connor Mystery Series) Paperback – June 9, 2009

by William Kent Krueger (Author)

4.4 13,096 ratings

Book 1 of 20: Cork O'Connor Mystery Series

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“A brilliant achievement, and one every crime reader and writer needs to celebrate.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Glass Houses

“A master craftsman [and] a series of books written with a grace and precision so stunning that you’d swear the stories were your own.” —Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire series

“Among thoughtful readers, William Kent Krueger holds a very special place in the pantheon.” —C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Disappeared

Read the thrilling, universally acclaimed debut that introduced the award-winning Cork O’Connor mystery series to the world by New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger.

In eighteen novels over twenty years, William Kent Krueger has enthralled readers with the adventures of P.I. Cork O’Connor, former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota—selling more than 1.5 million copies of his books and winning the Edgar Award, Minnesota Book Award, Northeastern Minnesota Book Award, Dilys Award, Lovey Award, and Anthony Award along the way. Now, in this special anniversary edition, longtime fans and new readers alike can read the novel that first introduced Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor to the world.

Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Cork is having difficulty dealing with the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, getting by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on this complicated and perplexing case of conspiracy, corruption, and a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.

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“The things that ask the most of us are the things most worth having.”
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A man was never just a man. A man was endless possibility waiting to become.
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Sam Winter Moon used to say that sometimes the only way a man learns the true spirit of a rock is to stub his toe on it.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“If you don’t know Cork O’Connor, get to know him now.” ― Booklist

“I can’t remember reading a better first novel than this one.”

― The Drood Review

“Iron Lake is an explosive brew: one part James Ellroy, one part Stephen King, one part Jack London, and all parts terrific… A truly remarkable first novel.” -- David Housewright, Edgar Award-winning author of Penance

“Minnesotan Krueger has a sense of place he’s plainly honed firsthand in below-zero prairie. His characters, too, sport charm and dimension… This first-timer’s stamina and self-assurance suggest that O’Connor’s got staying power.” ― Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

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

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Iron Lake

1

FOR A WEEK THE FEELING had been with him, and all week long young Paul LeBeau had been afraid. Of what exactly, he couldn’t say. Whenever he tried to put the finger of his thinking on it, it slipped away like a drop of mercury. But he knew that whatever was coming would be bad, because the feeling was exactly like the terrible waiting had been before his father disappeared. Each day he reached out into the air with all his senses, trying to touch what was coming. So that finally, on that morning in mid-December when the clouds rolled in thick and gray as smoke and the wind screamed over the pines and tamaracks and the snow began falling hard, Paul LeBeau looked out the window of his algebra class and thought hopefully, Maybe it’s only this.

Shortly after lunch, word of the school closing came down. Students quickly put on their coats and shouldered their book bags, and a few minutes later the yellow buses began to pull away, heading onto roads that threatened to disappear before them.

Paul left the Aurora Middle School and walked home, pushing into the force of the storm the whole way. He changed his clothes, put on his Sorel boots, took five dollars from the small cashbox on his dresser, and left his mother a note affixed with a butterfly magnet to the refrigerator door. Grabbing his canvas newspaper bag from its hook in the garage, he headed toward his drop box. By two-thirty he was loaded up and ready to go.

Paul had two paper routes covering nearly two and a half miles. He began with the small business district of Aurora and ended just at the town limits out on North Point Road. At fourteen, he was larger than most boys his age and very strong. If he hustled, he could finish in just under an hour and a half. But he knew this day would be different. The snow had been accumulating at a rate of more than an inch per hour and the bitter wind that swept down out of Canada drifted it fast and deep.

He took the routes in the time when his father was drinking heavily and his mother needed money. Delivering the papers, especially on days like this that seemed impossible, was a responsibility he took seriously. In truth, he loved the storms. The energy in the wind and the ceaseless force of the drifting snow thrilled him. Where another boy might see only the plodding task ahead of him, Paul saw challenge. He took pride in his ability to battle against these elements, trudging through the drifts, leaning hard into the wind in order to complete the job expected of him.

He was an Eagle Scout. Order of the Arrow. Member of Troop 135 out of St. Agnes Catholic Church. He had made himself capable in a hundred ways. He could start a fire with flint and steel; hit a bull’s-eye with a target arrow at thirty yards; tie a bowline, a sheepshank, a slipknot; lash together a bridge strong enough to bear the weight of several men. He knew how to treat someone for shock, drowning, cardiac arrest, and sunstroke. He believed seriously in the motto “Be Prepared,” and often as he walked his paper routes, he imagined scenarios of disaster in Aurora that would allow all his secret skills to shine.

By the time he neared the end of his deliveries, lights had been turned on in the houses along the way. He was tired. His shoulders ached from the weight of the papers and his legs felt leaden from wading through knee-deep drifts. The last house on his route stood at the very end of North Point Road, a pine-covered finger of land that jutted into Iron Lake and was lined with expensive homes. The last and most isolated of the houses belonged to Judge Robert Parrant.

The judge was an old man with a hard white face, bony hands, and sharp, watchful eyes. Out of fear Paul treated him with great deference. The judge’s paper was always placed securely between the storm door and the heavy wooden front door, safe from the elements. Whenever Paul came monthly to collect for his service, the judge rewarded him with a generous tip and more stories about politics than Paul cared to hear.

The judge’s house was almost dark, with only the flicker of a fireplace flame illuminating the living room curtains. With the last paper in hand, Paul threaded his way up the long walk between cedars laden with snow. He pulled the storm door open, plowing a little arc in the drift on the porch, and saw that the front door was slightly ajar. Cold air whistled into the house. As he reached out to draw the door closed, he heard the explosion from a heavy firearm discharged inside.

He edged the door back open. “Judge Parrant?” he called. “Are you all right?” He hesitated a moment, then stepped in.

Paul had been inside many times before at the judge’s request. He always hated it. The house was a vast two-story affair built of Minnesota sandstone. The interior walls were dark oak, the windows leaded glass. A huge stone fireplace dominated the living room, and the walls there were hung with hunting trophies—the heads of deer and antelope and bear whose sightless eyes seemed to follow Paul whenever the judge asked him in.

The house smelled of applewood smoke. The sudden pop of sap from a log burning in the fireplace made him jump.

“Judge Parrant?” he tried again.

He knew he should probably just leave and close the door behind him. But there had been the shot, and now he felt something in the stillness of the house from which he couldn’t turn, a kind of responsibility. As he stood with the door wide open at his back and the wind blowing through, he glanced down and watched tendrils of snow creep across the bare, polished floor and vine around his boots like something alive. He knew that a terrible thing had happened. He knew it absolutely.

He might still have turned away and run if he hadn’t seen the blood. It was a dark glistening on the polished hardwood floor at the bottom of the staircase. He walked slowly ahead, knelt, touched the small dark puddle with his fingertips, confirmed the color of it by the firelight. There was a bloody trail leading down the hallway to his left.

Pictures from the manual for his First Aid merit badge that showed arterial bleeding and how to apply direct pressure or a tourniquet came to his mind. He’d practiced these procedures a hundred times, but never really believing that he’d ever use them. He found himself hoping desperately the judge wasn’t badly hurt, and he panicked just a little at the thought that he might actually have to save a life.

The blood led him to a closed door where a dim light crept underneath.

“Judge Parrant?” he said cautiously, leaning close to the door.

He was reluctant to barge in, but when he finally turned the knob and stood in the threshold, he found a study lined with shelves of books. Along the far wall was a desk of dark wood with a lamp on it. The lamp was switched on but didn’t give much light and the room was heavy with shadows. On the wall directly back of the desk hung a map of Minnesota. Red lines like red rivers ran down the map from red splashes like red lakes. Behind the desk lay an overturned chair, and near the chair lay the judge.

Although fear reached way down inside him and made his legs go weak, he forced himself to move ahead. As he neared the desk and saw the judge more clearly, he forgot all about the procedures for a tourniquet. There was nowhere to put a tourniquet on a man who was missing most of his head.

For a moment he couldn’t move. He felt paralyzed, unable to think as he stared down at the raw pieces of the judge’s brain, pink as chunks of fresh watermelon. Paul didn’t even move when he heard the sound at his back, the soft shutting of the door. Finally he managed to turn away from the dead man just in time to see the second thing that night his Scout training could never have prepared him for.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Reprint edition (June 9, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1439157286
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1439157282
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.9 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #397,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,706 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
- #22,419 in American Literature (Books)
- #22,722 in Suspense Thrillers

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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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Scott E. High

Reminds Me Of Home

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020

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I left Central Wisconsin 56 years ago but was painfully reminded of the harsh winter climate when reading this novel set in Minnesota. Add in the early morning paper route one of the young characters was responsible for which required newspapers to be delivered during all kinds of weather. Another similarity was that both of us were Eagle Scouts and members of the Order of the Arrow. And then of course we had a hunting cabin (or tar paper shack is a better description) just on the other side of a bog close to the Manitowish Waters Ojibwa Reservation. The Ojibwa by the way had much better and far more comfortable accommodations than we had. While the bog served as a natural boundary, on occasion we could tell that we were being watched, but we never did discover who was doing the watching. So the similarities I lived through were prevalent in this story.

This personal history helped me relate to the people, climate and scenes described in "Iron Lake". I normally read aggressive crime/thriller/mystery novels which are set in large urban populations where the technology used is up-to-date, the urban scenes dark and dreary, and a host of attractive women seem to make up the majority of the population. Many of those novels don't even identify the race or heritage of the characters, leaving the reader with a homogeneous feeling. Mr. Kruger however is very specific on race, body type, character, level of intelligence, and the goals of each of his actors.

I discovered this novel when I switched up my method of discovering new authors to read. Recommendations from friends helped as well as tracking down some of the novels that Amazon sends me outlines of. Then it's a matter of weaning down the choices further to determine the average rating given by reviewers -- not just to each specific novel selected but also to the other works written by the same author. William Kent Krueger stood out for the quality of all of his works and because of the rather unusual setting for his Cork O'Connor mystery series.

This novel turned out to be an exceptional selection. "Iron Lake" was written 20 years ago and was such a good seller that a twentieth anniversary edition was just published for those of us unfamiliar with this author's skill set. The northern winter scenery was a story in itself and figured prominently in the plot. Nothing moved too fast and in fact some critical thinking was required to keep up with the characters' thoughts and actions. But the novel itself proved to be an extremely enjoyable read especially since the first person narratives were often given by several of the main characters. That was extremely helpful in deciding why some actions were taken and how those activities affected the lives of each of them. Great job Mr. Krueger. I'll be taking another trip with Cork very soon.

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James L. Thane

Introducing Cork O'Connor

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2014

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After working a number of years as a Chicago cop, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor moves his wife and children back to Auora, Minnesota, his tiny home town in the northern part of the state. His objective is to provide his family with a better quality of life, but those dreams go up in smoke very early on, both in his professional and personal lives.

Aurora borders the Anishinaabe Indian reservation, which is enjoying a newfound prosperity as a result of the casino that has just been built on the reservation and which is practically minting money. O'Connor is part Anishinaabe himself and would seem to be the ideal bridge between the two societies. But when things take a decidedly bad turn, O'Connor is forced to stand in a recall election and is booted out of office. As the book opens, he's reduced to eking out a living running a seasonal hamburger stand. Meanwhile, his wife has become a very successful attorney and the two are now estranged.

When the town's most prominent citizen, a political boss named Judge Parrant, is found dead from a shotgun blast, the new sheriff declares it a suicide, but O'Connor isn't so sure. On the same evening that the judge dies, a young Indian boy goes missing from his paper route in a huge blizzard. Is there a possible connection between the two events?

Though no longer having any legal authority to do so, O'Connor begins investigating both developments. This will inevitably get him in hot water with a lot of people, and in the meantime, his family situation continues to deteriorate. O'Connor is also feeling guilty because, in the wake of the separation from his wife, he has secretly begun seeing a beautiful waitress with a hot sauna and a bad reputation.

The strength of the book lies principally in Krueger's description of the brutal winter landscape in which the story plays out. He's also carefully researched this history of the Anishinaabe and describes their culture and society sympathetically and knowledgeably. It's a complex story with lots of twists and turns, and a reader would be well-advised to have a hot toddy or two close at hand as a remedy for the freezing Minnesota winter.

If I have a concern about the book it lies principally with the whole idea of Cork O'Connor conducting this investigation with no legal authority to do so. This involves him meddling in crime scenes and breaking and entering into several buildings in search of evidence, legal niceties be damned. The new sheriff is something of a Casper Milquetoast, who occasionally warns O'Connor off, but who at other times works with him. It's hard to imaging this scenario ever playing out in real life, and virtually all of the evidence that O'Connor gathers would be inadmissible in any court, given that it was obtained illegally and without the benefit of warrants, proper chain of custody and other such minor matters. But if one can suspend disbelief long enough to overlook these issues, this is a very solid start to the Cork O'Connor series.

17 people found this helpful

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BCFisch

twists and turns

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2024

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Quick start then slowed down then holy moly.
Good character development. However, I had a difficult time actually envisioning what the characters look like, which was a challenge for me as a person who plays the movie of the story in my head.
Every time you thought you had it completely figured out, something new would be introduced. Twists galore! Came to a crazy ending as well. I said a good ole MN oofta after finishing, can’t wait to read more of this series.

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Kindle Customer

Love this series!!

Reviewed in Canada on January 6, 2024

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I have enjoyed this series immensely!

Historybuff

Krueger is James Lee Burke of the North

Reviewed in Australia on April 8, 2021

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Krueger evokes the same atmosphere for the Iron Range of Minnesota as Burke does for the bayou of Louisiana . Corcoran O'Connor is part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, a former sheriff who was voted out of office in a small Minnesota town. He is a devoted father and a banished husband guiltily watching his marriage dissolve. His skills and his connections with the local tribe draw him into the mystery of the murder of a prominent judge and the disappearance an Anishinaabe boy . Woven throughout the story are the forests, the frozen lakes, the snow and Anishinaabe traditions. This a beautifully written page turner I would recommend to anyone who loves James Lee Burke as much as I do.

Sabine Korsukewitz

Geoßartiger Einstieg in eine Serie

Reviewed in Germany on December 27, 2015

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Gibt es das Genre "Landschaftskrimi"? Wenn nicht, sollte man es einführen. William Kent Krueger stellt hier seine Ermittlerfigur vor, einen Ex-Cop der als Mischling zwischen der Welt der Weißen und der Welt der Ojibwe-Indianer steht. Er ist verbittert, weil er gerade seinen Job als Sherriff verloren hat. Seine Ehe ist so gut wie gescheitert. Den Winter muss er in einer kleinen Hütte verbringen. Mitten im Schneesturm wird ein einflussreicher lokaler Politiker ermordet un d ein Indianerjunge wird vermisst. Cork O'Connor, der das Schnüffeln nicht lassen kann, wird verwickelt in eine Intrige, die ihn seine geliebte kostet aber am Ende seinen Fraun zurückbringt. Nach allen Regeln der Kunst geschriebeb: Eine tolle, gebrochene Ermittlerfigur, großartige Landschaft und Wetter, raffinierter Plot.

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内田光彦

先住民族にまつわる物語

Reviewed in Japan on May 11, 2015

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主人公のコーク・オコナーには先住民の血が混じっている。ミネソタのオーロラという架空？の町が舞台。近くに居留地がある。ほとんどカナダとの国境に近い場所。冬の間の話なので、湖は凍結している。湖面を車やスノーモービルで行き来している。アイアン・レイクの名前は、近くで鉄鉱石を産出していたので、その名がある。コークは妻との間がうまく行っていない。子どもは３人。この夫婦関係の行方が興味ぶかい。殺人やいろいろな出来事の中で、元シェリフのコークが裏を取ろうと動く。初めは誰が背景にいるのか分からない。少しずつ事情が分かってくる。最後に犯人と攻防。物語の舞台や先住民としての話が珍しく、夫婦関係や子どもたちとの先行きも気になる。これがデビュー作とのこと。シリーズは楽しめそうだ。この著者のOrdinary Graceという作品も読んでみたい。

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Linda Pfeiffer

The 20th anniversary of Kruegar's first in his series about the heroic Cork O'Connor

Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2019

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I recently read a novel by William Kent Krueger called Ordinary Grace which I thoroughly enjoyed and decided to read another story of his soon. Then I found the 20th anniversary issue of his novel Iron Lake in which he introduces his readers to Cork O'Connor his protagonist in a new series begun before the new millennium. Cork is half native American and half Irish descent, favoring his father's side in looks with his fair skin and ginger hair and his mystical thinking gained from his native influence. The setting in a mountainous rural town becomes a character in his books. Without the snow storms, icy lake and treacherous roads, this book cannot exist. Did I like it as much as Ordinary Grace, probably not, but I did enjoy his talented writing and storytelling and will undoubtedly read something of his again.

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