I’m just starting one book, and reading and writing reviews for Library Journal, so it’s time to pick up an audiobook review from Sandie Herron. She’s been on a roll with William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mysteries. Today, she talks about Mercy Falls. Thank you, Sandie.
MERCY FALLS
Cork O’Connor mystery #5
Written by William Kent Krueger
Narrated by David Chandler
Unabridged Audiobook
Recorded Books (10/24/2008) (originally published 2005)
Listening Length: 11 hours 31 minutes
Cork O’Connor is once again the sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota. He had been sheriff years ago but circumstances went against him, and he was voted out. He again finds himself straddling the world of the white man and the Anishinaabe Indian who live on the reservation. He’s made it an unwritten policy to go on all calls to the reservation, so when a 911 call comes in about a man beating his wife, Cork goes along. Deputy Marsha Dross drives and is first to head toward the home, which makes her the sniper’s first target. The remaining deputies scramble, but the shooter vanishes, leaving Marsha in a fight for her life.
Cork is called out again, this time to Mercy Falls, a secluded park area in Aurora. A man’s mutilated body has been left in a bloody mess. He is identified as Eddie Jacoby, a man working to connect the casinos with his Chicago management firm, an unpopular contract. The wealthy Jacoby family arrives in town before the coroner even has a chance to prep the body for viewing. Father Lou and brother Ben formally identify Eddie and then proceed to make demands on how the investigation should proceed. Backed by big money, they leave town only when Cork agrees to allow their consultant Dina Wilner to tag along in his investigation.
The next day, Cork finds a bomb rigged to his car, which prompts an evacuation of his wife Jo and three children as well as the neighborhood. Clearly whoever is after Cork isn’t finished, so he sends his family to visit Jo’s sister in Chicago. Ben Jacoby approaches Jo while there. Once lovers while in law school, Ben has never stopped loving Jo, and he’s keen on rekindling their romance. Back in Aurora, Dina Wilner is making advances on Cork.
Piecing clues together, Cork feels he knows who is behind the sniper attack and the bomb threat and possibly even Jacoby’s death. He leads a man hunt into the Iron Lake Reservation aided by Midewiwin Henry Meloux. Increasingly uneasy about Jo’s absence, when Cork returns home, he calls. She is glad he is safe, but she has one more thing to do in Chicago. When Jo goes missing, Cork must find a way out of his own exhaustion to find her.
It took a while for the pieces of this puzzle to fall together. Throughout, author Krueger’s description of the land and lakes grounds us. When the man hunt leaves those beautiful venues, the race is truly on for the safety of Cork and his family. I could not put the book down as the pace sped up with both in danger. The book ends abruptly without a resolution. Book six in this series, Copper Falls, picks up where Mercy Falls leaves off, so be prepared for a strong desire to keep reading, which I definitely did!
Note: I don’t know if your library is open again or not. Some libraries are open, some doing curbside service, and some are still closed. However, you can may be able to get Mercy Falls as a downloadable audiobook through your library, if they have a subscription to RBdigital. Or, of course, you can probably get it in print or cd format if your library is open or providing curbside service.
