I’m aware that you can only get Audible Audiobooks through Amazon. There was an excellent article in The Washington Post this past week explaining why you can’t get the audiobooks of some authors’ works through your local public library. Amazon will not allow public libraries to buy the audiobooks they own through their Audible department. However, I still think it’s important to post Sandie Herron’s audiobook reviews here. Many people depend on audiobooks to “read” a book, and they do use Audible. I see this blog as also a discovery tool. If you went back to Sandie’s last audiobook review, you’ll discover I listed the information for the book itself. I’m offering you choices. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, you can get that title through Audible. If you’d rather pick up a book, you can still read Sandie’s review. She spends much more time talking about the book itself than she does the reader. I’m always grateful when Sandie sends a review. I just wanted to provide a little background for all of you.

Thank you, Sandie, for reviewing the sixth in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series, Copper River.

Copper River

Written by William Kent Krueger

Narrated by David Chandler

Series:  Cork O’Connor, Book 6

Unabridged Audiobook

Recorded Books (1/6/2007)

Listening Length:  9 hours 47 minutes

Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction

This book opens with a disturbing scene of a young teenage girl fleeing a man and his dog.  She has been abused and is literally running for her life.  I found this chapter difficult to read for the emotional response I had, yet it sets up the story to follow.

From there, the action picks up where we left off in MERCY FALLS, the fifth in this excellent series featuring Cork O’Connor who is again the sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota.  He has a bullet in his leg from a professional hit man after him following his role in the death of Ben Jacoby, rich Chicago mobster.

Cork has made his way to the small town of Bodine, Wisconsin where his cousin Jewell DuBois has a small resort near the Copper River.  With her young teenage son Ren, they eek out a living, both missing Ren’s dad killed a year ago.  Ren is into comic books, and she into her job as a veterinarian.  Ren’s closest friend is a tomboy known as Charlie who lives with her often-drunk father.  They sometimes hang out with Stash who swears he saw a body in the river.  They investigate one evening while Charlie waits for her father to pass out so she can sleep.  Concerned, Ren checks on her the next morning and finds Charlie’s father with his head bashed in and Charlie gone.  The authorities find a young girl’s body on the banks of the river. 

Cork’s wounded leg makes it difficult to do much so he is glad when Dina Willner, the security expert hired by Lou Jacoby to watch over him in MERCY FALLS tracks him down in Bodine, despite the bounty on his head.  Jewell is helping Ren find his friend Charlie who they trace to a homeless shelter where she sometimes stays when they learn that Stash has been hit by a car.  Dina joins them as they try to determine who the dead young woman was, but the shelter has strict privacy rules.  Cork and Ren check the woods to the river and run into the patrol of the Copper River Club, an exclusive club for the wealthy escaping to nature.  They determine that the young woman must have entered the river there.  Cork is then confronted by an over-eager newspaper reporter who has put pieces together and reveals his identity.  It is time then to involve the local police.  What follows untangles a web of deceit and treachery that goes back decades. 

Throughout the book, young Ren has been following a wounded cougar leaving tracks at his home, in the woods, by the river.  His hopes for its life follow the same lines as the investigation.  Cork’s original problem of the bounty hunters searching for him returns.  With a full rifle pointed at him, a wounded cougar ready to spring, and Ren in danger, Cork must make the tough decisions.

Ren has had some hard lessons to learn, and Cork has been there to help him through.  Cork thinks of his own son at home and smiles.  Cork brings a heartwarming end to an horrific mystery brought alive by the words and beliefs of author William Kent Krueger and the narration by David Chandler.  A memorable entry in an excellent series.

Copper River by William Kent Krueger. Atria, 2006. ISBN 9780743278402 (hardcover), 320p.