Iron Lake: A Cork O'Connor Mystery Book

Rare is the author whose sheer mastery of detail, character, and storytelling succeeds in evoking the underlying essence of a place -- Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles...Tony Hillerman's Southwest...Carl Hiassen's Florida. Now, in a dazzling debut, William Kent Krueger joins them, taking us into the lake country of northern Minnesota to reveal the dark side of its snow-covered landscape.

Part Irish, part Anishanaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota -- population 3,752. Embittered by his "former" status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago's South Side, he's found that there's not much left in life that can shock him. But when the town's judge, Robert Parrant, is brutally murdered, and Eagle Scout Paul LeBeau is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption and scandal.

Asked by LeBeau's panicked mother to find her son, Cork's investigation grows icier, and more treacherous, than a frozen lake at midnight.

The coroner declares Judge Parrant's death a suicide and quickly cremates the corpse. The current sheriff throws critical evidence in the incinerator. And a right-wing paramilitary group makes it violently clear that Cork would be better off letting dead dogs lie. To top it all off, Cork discovers a small-town secret with the big-time implications that hits painfully close to home.

With bodies and questions piling up faster than the Minnesota snow, Cork's the only one stubborn enough to uncover the truth -- a truth he can't ignore, a truth he's determined to face...even if it kills him.