‘Mercy Falls’ by William Kent Krueger (Cork O’Connor # 5)

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Quite a few books I’ve read lately have been amazing, which makes it hard to choose what to read next. Sometimes nothing else measures up for awhile– maybe you’ve felt the same way. What I like to do in a case like that, is turn to a series I’m in the middle of, either mystery or otherwise, and use it as a ‘palette cleanser.’ Not only do I knock off another in the series, it just helps to rest and reset my brain with the familiar, before returning to my TBR list again.

Cork O’Connor is the main protagonist in this series which is set in Minnesota and frequently features the Boundary Waters–a wilderness area along the Canadian border that (by its descriptions in this series) reminds me of Algonquin Park in Ontario.

Back on the beat as sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork finds himself the target of a sniper’s deadly fire. He has little time to worry about his own precarious situation, however. Soon after the shooting, he’s called to investigate a mutilated body found perched above the raging waters of Mercy Falls. The victim is Eddie Jacoby, a Chicago businessman from a wealthy family that may be involved in something sinister. Are the incidents related? When his wife Jo and their children become targets as well, O’Connor will stop at nothing to find the answers he needs and protect them all from harm. He flees into the Boundary Waters, and then the book ends, without ending.

With the story unresolved, I’ve had to secure the next one in the series, Copper River (Cork O’Connor # 6) to find out what happens. Krueger himself struggled with whether or not to put a “Book with No End” into the world and wrote a piece about it on his website. It’s an interesting read: click here.