Tag Archives: Cork O'Connor Mystery # 3

‘Purgatory Ridge’ by William Kent Krueger (Cork O’Connor # 3)

Rating: 4 out of 5.

This series just keeps getting better. Page turning tension and plenty of twisty surprises in addition to further development of the main recurring characters, is what kept my seat firmly on the edge of the chair while reading this third instalment. Cork O’Connor needs to rely on all of his ingenuity and endurance in order to survive, as well as come to grips with his softer side in order to maintain the relationships that mean the most to him. It is necessary to read these books in order but there’s no hardship in that.

Pancake Bay, Lake Superior

The book begins with a true story of a man who was the sole survivor of a freighter that succumbed to a storm on Lake Huron and a similar incident imagined on Lake Superior. Indeed, the Great Lakes are littered with wrecks (about 6000 actually, many undiscovered, and many tens of thousands of mariners lost).

Last fall we camped on a beach of this vast and ancient body of water and during a storm I played Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and imagined the power of the waves that could buckle a massive ship just miles from where we sheltered on the shore. Krueger taught me a few things about some of the lines in that song that I never clued in on before. That was fun!