While I finish my April Treasures in My Closet post, Sandie Herron has a review of William Kent Krueger’s standalone, The Devil’s Bed. It’s twenty years old, but, hopefully, no one has seen fit to use “sensitivity readers” and redo the book. Thank you, Sandie.

THE DEVIL’S BED
By William Kent Krueger
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date:  February 4, 2003
ISBN-10: 0743445848
ISBN-13: 978-0743445849

“It was a city built on promise, on compromise, on inspiration and empty rhetoric both, on history poorly remembered and easily bent, and once in a while, on good people with the best of intentions who battled against the distrust, misdirection, and deceit that was politics as usual,” so ruminates US Secret Service Agent Bo Thorsen about the city of Washington, DC.  His service has taken him around the nation, but his current home base is St. Paul, Minnesota.  It is here that he grew up in a troubled and broken home, eventually finding his way into the criminal justice system as a juvenile in front of Judge Annie Jorgenson.

Years later Bo finds himself in her presence again, this time as a special agent securing the home where she lives with her brother, former Vice President Tom Jorgensen.  When Tom Jorgensen is found unconscious in his apple orchard, First Lady Kathleen Jorgensen Dixon returns to Wildwood to be with her father.  The protective duties of the Secret Service do not cover the former Vice President, but they are required when a member of the first family visits.  Therefore, not only does the First Lady bring members of the Secret Service with her when she arrives, but local agents join the forces protecting her and Wildwood while she stays there.

So it is not unusual that ex-VP Tom Jorgensen would not be covered by agents while hospitalized.  When Bo starts to put together pieces that question whether his injuries were sustained in an accident, he stirs up already taut emotions.  Then a hospital security guard is found dead.  The evidence now proves too strong to ignore, and agents are posted to protect Jorgensen.  The motives for the attack by the man with a dark and troubled childhood appear simple, but are they really?

Because of his excellence in protecting those in Minnesota, President Clay Dixon calls Bo to the White House.  One of Clay’s closest advisors is dead, and he has suspicions that cannot be dealt with through normal channels, in large part because he wants to escape the influence of his father, Senator William Dixon.  In his eighth term, Senator Dixon yields enormous power.  As Bo continues to find ties that take him back to the senior Dixon, we are brought to the question of whose authority is greater. 

Krueger has taken a large cast of characters and turned their interactions with each other into a spellbinding thriller.  He has a way of sharing personal details about each one that help keep each individual distinct from another and yet revealing how they are all intertwined.  The relationships are illuminated one by one until there is a very tangled ball of intrigue.

Krueger also plays fair with the reader.  Seemingly innocent clues are placed throughout that later prove to be crucial to the storyline.  Multiple narratives occur simultaneously and later converge with alarming clarity.  Krueger has brilliantly taken something complex and broken it down into seemingly simple parts of the whole.  It is how these parts mingle and twist and turn back on each other that fascinated me.  The inter-relationships between people are what drives this story, although it certainly does not lack action to steer the way. 

William Kent Krueger is also the author of the Cork O’Connor mysteries that take place in Minnesota.  On the surface, I would say that location is the only similarity between the O’Connor series and THE DEVIL’S BED, but each deal with men trying to find their way in the world, trying to find their role in the bigger picture.   Ultimately we learn that one of the rules young Bo learned still holds true:  “Life isn’t fair.  But some people are.  Be one of them.”  It’s nice to know that Bo is one of them.