Copper River: A Cork O'Connor Mystery

bTwo-time Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has moved to the head of the crime fiction class (IChicago Sun-Times/i) with his gripping series featuring Sheriff Cork O'Connor. InICopper River/i, Cork is running for his life -- and straight into a murderous conspiracy involving teenage runaways./bPDesperately avoiding the clutches of professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he's hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen-year-old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River -- and then another teenager vanishes. Instead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses on tracking a ring of killers who prey on innocent children -- before anyone else falls victim. But as his deadly followers close in, Cork realizes he's made an error any good man might make -- and it may be his last.Believable, complicated characters and strong writing. . . . Sympathetic and moving.--IThe Star Tribune/i(Minneapolis)This series gets darker and more elegantly written with every book.--IBooklist/iWilliam Kent Krueger may just be the best pure suspense novelist working today.-- Bill Pronzini, author of the Nameless Detective series andIBlue Lonesome/ip align=centerbbigChapter 1/big/bPHenry Meloux, the old Ojibwe Mide, might tell the story this way.PHe might begin by saying that the earth is alive, that all things on it -- water, air, plants, rocks, even dead trees -- have spirit. In the absence of wind, the grass still trembles. On days when the clouds are dense as gray wool, flowers still understand how to track the sun. Trees, when they bend, whisper to one another. In such a community of spirits, nothing goes unnoticed. Would not the forest, therefore, know that a child is about to die?PShe is fourteen years, nine months, twenty-seven days old. S