Rating: 
Summary: uppolishak
Review: This is a very good story, many twists and turns and the outcome is very surprising. This gentleman sure is a great writer. Have enjoyed all of his books in the Cork O'Connor series. Pick up this book and read it today, you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: uppolishak
Review: This is a very good story, many twists and turns and the outcome is very surprising. This gentleman sure is a great writer. Have enjoyed all of his books in the Cork O'Connor series. Pick up this book and read it today, you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: This one's got it all!
Review: This is the 1st Krueger novel I've read (I just found out its the 3rd in a "series") and I was totally captivated by it! The characters are incredibly lifelike, the storyline is well rounded, the plot is riveting, and the emotion is powerful.When I first read the dust cover for a synopsis of the book, I admit I was unimpressed. But after reading only a few pages of the book, I was 100% interested in what was happening within the story (actually turned out to be multiple story lines - all receiving equal and adequate attention). I'm on my way to get the remaining Krueger novels (excellent job, Mr. Krueger!) and I highly recommend this book as a very entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: This one's got it all!
Review: This is the 1st Krueger novel I've read (I just found out its the 3rd in a "series") and I was totally captivated by it! The characters are incredibly lifelike, the storyline is well rounded, the plot is riveting, and the emotion is powerful. When I first read the dust cover for a synopsis of the book, I admit I was unimpressed. But after reading only a few pages of the book, I was 100% interested in what was happening within the story (actually turned out to be multiple story lines - all receiving equal and adequate attention). I'm on my way to get the remaining Krueger novels (excellent job, Mr. Krueger!) and I highly recommend this book as a very entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: Another terrific Cork O'Connor novel
Review: This is the third in what discerning readers all over the world must hope will be a long-running series featuring Cork O'Conner, his wife Jo, and his three children, Jenny, Annie and Stevie. While this is a fine mystery, and a terrific adventure, all these elements of the novel are shaped and informed by the changing relationships among this family. These relationships are at the core of author Krueger's interest, and while I feel he still struggles at times with female sensibilities, his "take" on father-daughter contretemps and emotional spread is dead on. Lake Superior is a vast, emotionless, natural wonder. Yet we frequently describe it's many moods in human terms, its raging storms, its implacable irresistible strength, its icy coldness. In the dark foundation of this story, Lake Superior plays a real and important role. Krueger has taken the true story of one man's improbable survival of the sinking of a lake freighter in a November storm, and made it the prime motivator for everything that follows. Some things in life, and in death, appear to be foregone. From the very beginning, when John LaPere loses his beloved younger brother to the great lake, it seems inevitable that LaPere's ancestral sensibilities will one day lead his feet into a path that intersects with those of the O'Connor family, and with others, whites and Indians, who live, work, plot, scheme and murder, in and around the small northwoods community of Aurora. The story begins in high tension, death and destruction and rarely slackens it grip until the final chapter. In Purgatory Ridge you will find all the elements readers have come to expect from this fine writer: a complex plot, a great range of real characters who jump off the pages, descriptive passages that bring scenes so alive one can almost smell the pine woods of Northern Minnesota and hear the waves of the great lake, good dialog, suspense, well-contrived and placed sub-plots, a fired up pace and a careful, surprising ending that perfectly fits what has gone before. Purgatory Ridge is a novel to be savored.
Rating:
Summary: Another terrific Cork O'Connor novel
Review: This is the third in what discerning readers all over the world must hope will be a long-running series featuring Cork O'Conner, his wife Jo, and his three children, Jenny, Annie and Stevie. While this is a fine mystery, and a terrific adventure, all these elements of the novel are shaped and informed by the changing relationships among this family. These relationships are at the core of author Krueger's interest, and while I feel he still struggles at times with female sensibilities, his "take" on father-daughter contretemps and emotional spread is dead on. Lake Superior is a vast, emotionless, natural wonder. Yet we frequently describe it's many moods in human terms, its raging storms, its implacable irresistible strength, its icy coldness. In the dark foundation of this story, Lake Superior plays a real and important role. Krueger has taken the true story of one man's improbable survival of the sinking of a lake freighter in a November storm, and made it the prime motivator for everything that follows. Some things in life, and in death, appear to be foregone. From the very beginning, when John LaPere loses his beloved younger brother to the great lake, it seems inevitable that LaPere's ancestral sensibilities will one day lead his feet into a path that intersects with those of the O'Connor family, and with others, whites and Indians, who live, work, plot, scheme and murder, in and around the small northwoods community of Aurora. The story begins in high tension, death and destruction and rarely slackens it grip until the final chapter. In Purgatory Ridge you will find all the elements readers have come to expect from this fine writer: a complex plot, a great range of real characters who jump off the pages, descriptive passages that bring scenes so alive one can almost smell the pine woods of Northern Minnesota and hear the waves of the great lake, good dialog, suspense, well-contrived and placed sub-plots, a fired up pace and a careful, surprising ending that perfectly fits what has gone before. Purgatory Ridge is a novel to be savored.
Rating:
Summary: Kent Krueger's 3rd novel delivers fine characters
Review: Years ago, plot was the thing in mystery novels. Over the last several decades, authors have relied less on plot and more on character to carry their work. Two current authors who are especially proficient with character driven mysteries, but who also don't scrimp on the twists and turns, are Michael Connelly (see my review of A Darkness More than Night elsewhere) and William Kent Krueger. William Kent Krueger's third Cork O'Connor book, Purgatory Ridge is set in Aurora a town in northern Minnesota not far from Lake Superior. Krueger's novel runs several plots simultaneously. But each is propelled more by their respective character's backgrounds and motivations, and less by finding a solution to a traditional mystery puzzle. When an early morning explosion at a lumber mill kills a respected Anishinaabe tribal leader, the stage is set for confrontation over the logging of old-growth white pines. The trees are considered sacred by the Anishinaabe, but the townsfolk rely heavily on money from logging and environmental extremists have swarmed in to stop any logging at all. Meanwhile, a man who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck on Lake Superior, obsessed with guilt over his brother's death in the same wreck, vows revenge on the family-run shipping line even if it leads to kidnapping and murder. Into the mix is O'Connor, the former sheriff of Aurora, a man who, like Connelly's McCaleb, is beginning to realize how much he misses police work. He is encouraged by several prominent citizens to run again for office, but his wife, a prominent attorney, dreads the affect it would have on their fragile marriage. Krueger's handling of his character's thoughts and motivations is deft and he never lets the tension of the subplots falter. O'Connor, his family, and especially the Anishinaabe people are appealing because they are delivered fully alive to the reader.
| 
