Vermilion Drift

Summary: The discovery of six bodies in an underground iron mine leads to facing uncomfortable truths about Cork’s father.

Cork O’Connor comes home to an empty house every night. His children are away for the summer. And he has nightmares. In them he sees his father falling, crying for his help. Then, stepping out of himself, he sees the same scene again–only he is pushing his father. He cannot make sense of it.

But in the daylight, his life is bustling. Sam’s Place is thriving under the manager who would like to buy the place. He has rich consulting clients, including an iron mine owner, Max Cavanaugh. He’s helping with security arrangements while an old mine is under consideration as a nuclear waste storage site. There are show more protests. Then several people receive threatening messages: “We die. you die.” Max has also asked him to investigate the disappearance of his sister Lauren, who ran an arts center out of the old Judge Parrant mansion.

When the same message appears inside the mine, Cork investigates whether there was another access to the mine. He discovers that one of the side tunnels, the Vermilion Drift (drift being the term for such tunnels) ran under the reservation of the tribal lands and that there was an exit that had been blocked up. But he discovers something else. Six bodies, including one recently murdered.

The recently murdered person turns out to be Lauren Cavanaugh. Four other bodies were of young girls who had disappeared from tribal lands during “the Vanishings.” These occurred fifty years ago. The other body is that of Max’s mother, from the same time. Cork’s father had been sheriff then and Cork a rebellious teen. If all this isn’t weird enough, both women were killed by the same gun, a .38 revolver. That catches Cork’s attention. His father used a .38, which Cork inherited, until he turned it over to Henry Meloux for safekeeping after a school shooting. When he looks in the place Henry concealed it, it is gone.

Cork begins to wonder what his father’s role was in all this. He had been investigating the Vanishings the summer before his death in a shootout arising from a bank holdup. Cork remembers something was different about his father. But there is much from that time he doesn’t remember. All he remembers is being at his father’s deathbed, listening to his mother’s prayers, unable to join her.

As the official investigation of the murders past and present go on, Cork cooperates, but doesn’t share the part about his father. Rather, he pursues a search that uncovers both unspeakable evil, and the possibility that his father had some part in this. Amid all this, Cork realizes that his own missing memories and his nightmares are important, but could also reveal truths that could shatter the image of his father.

Krueger combines a murder mystery with plot twists and red herrings with an inner journey that tests Cork’s resolve to know the truth. Henry Meloux, growing increasingly frail, both holds and withholds the key, waiting for Cork to come to the place beyond anger when he is ready. It’s not clear whether Cork will reach this place or whether it could cost him his relationship with Henry. All that makes you keep turning the pages in another finely written installment in this series. show less

Seriously continue to love this series. I love how the main character, Corcoran O'Connor, continues to age and grow. This was a bit of a sad one in many ways. Corc is coming off of a great tragedy that he is just now learning to deal with. Plus old tragedy rears its head. The mystery as always is well thought out and interesting. I hope things look up for Corc soon.

I love the Cork O’Connor series, but this one, though exciting enough, was not my favourite of this wonderful series. Although, at the same time, it is an important one to read because we are introduced to a young Cork O’Connor and his parents. We get some insight into what shaped and formed Cork, and we learn that even though his dad died when Cork was 14, he is very much like his Dad was. Where the book fell down for me a bit was in the mystical evil aspect which is the basis for this book. I prefer to stick with straight-forward detection thrillers with bad guys that you can touch and understand a little. This book shows a more reflective Cork. It’s been a year since his wife’s death which event profoundly changed his family show more dynamics. His children are away from home and it’s only Cork and his dog Trixie at home. We still have the wonderful supporting characters like Sheriff Dross, Henry Maloo and others from the town of Aurora, and we still have the beautiful surroundings of Northern Minnesota. I highly recommend this series. Cork is the most down-to-earth detective that you’ll ever find. show less

Cork O’Connor is now a P.I. and hired to locate Lauren Cavanaugh, the sister of Max Cavanaugh who owns the Vermillion mine. The Department of Energy is scoping out the mine as a possible storage place for nuclear waste which has the Natives protesting. When six bodies are found in a closed section of the mine, it is discovered that one is a current death and could be Lauren. What complicates matters is that both Lauren and one victim who died in 1964, were killed by the same gun, Cork’s gun, one that his father had given to him but which he gave to his friend Henry to dispose of in a previous book. Cork is looking for answers but Henry isn’t too forthcoming which leads Cork to read some of his mother’s diary. Cork wonders if his show more father wasn’t quite the upstanding officer everyone thought he was. Henry is hiding something, friends on the reservation are hiding something, and someone is leaving threatening notes for the DE representative and anyone in favor of the dumping. But Cork is none too innocent either because when the sheriff turns to him for help, Cork isn’t too forthcoming with information he discovers. I had mentioned in the previous book that Cork needed to spend a week with Jack (either Bauer or Reacher) because this aversion to weapons in his line of work just isn’t going to cut it. He needs to “man up.” With VERMILLION DRIFT, Cork has grown a pair. Unfortunately, they are on Henry’s niece, Rainy. She is a welcome addition as she tends to her ailing uncle. She takes zip from Cork and one can only assume there might be some future with the two. In resolving the murders, Cork realizes there are some secrets better left unsaid. show less

A dive into the world of mining underground and the prospect of using old mines to store nuclear waste. While inspecting an old mine Max and Cork discover six bodies. Five of the bodies have been over forty years in the mine and the sixth body is only a week old. What begins as Cork recreating his past and his memory leading up to his father’s death. William Kent Krueger spins a story rich in characters and location. Krueger does not skimp on detail, which can be good or bad. Krueger does extensive research for his stories, and does not load the novel with unnecessary dialogue. A good mix of the good, bad, and ugly compose the story, but so many unanswered questions. I would like to know how Krueger chooses the characters names.

VERMILION DRIFT by William Kent Krueger is not a formulaic thriller. But it sure is a mystery/thriller.

In this book, Cork O’Connor is a private investigator hired to find the person leaving threatening messages for various people involved in the use of a former mine for the storage of nuclear waste. One of those men also hires Cork to find his sister. So Cork is doing both jobs at once. But this doesn’t last long. She is found, along with the skeletal remains of five other people, in a hidden area of the mine, the Vermilion Drift.

Now it is Cork’s job not only to learn who is leaving the messages but, also, to help find the person or people who murdered five people 40 years ago (as determined by a forensic anthropologist) and one show more person a week ago. At first, some mysteries, like whose bones have been there for 40 years, unravel quickly. But did the same person or people kill all six people, the five in 1964 and the one more recently? Do the protest and the protesters outside the mine have anything to do with the recent murder? How are the older murders and the recent murder connected? Why do four of the skeletal remains belong to Indians while one belongs to a white woman who was the mother of the sixth murder victim? Could Cork’s own gun, the gun that was his father’s when he was county sheriff 40 years ago, have been the murder weapon? Why are certain pages cut from Cork’s mother’s 40-year-old journal? These are some of the mysteries Cork must solve.

This is one book in a series about Cork O’Connor, but it doesn’t seem necessary to read the series in order. Krueger explains that Cork’s wife was murdered a year ago; his children are adults now, scattered to various parts of the country; he is part Indian, and his past and present jobs have been and are involved with Indians and the local Indian reservation (the “rez”); and, like his father, he used to be county sheriff. That’s explanation enough.

VERMILION DRIFT is a thriller, with stories within stories within stories and with the answer to one question leading to more questions. It’s better than most bestselling thrillers because it’s not formulaic as so many thrillers are. It is character-driven.

Only one criticism: the old Indian Henry. He knows so much yet will speak only in riddles throughout the book. And Cork reveres him. He just goes along with Henry’s evasiveness and his sometimes corny Indian traditions and rituals that act like pauses in elements of the story that might have been more thrilling.

Even so, readers will enjoy and appreciate this nonformulaic thriller. My criticism is debatable. show less

This is the tenth book in a series involving detective Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor of Tamarack County, Minnesota, but I have never read any of his books prior to this one. It turned out not to matter at all; this book stands alone with no problem.

You learn quite a bit about iron mining in this suspense/mystery, as well as about the local Ojibwe concerns and customs, and I really liked that. I feel “guilty” enough as it is just reading a murder mystery, but when I can learn something from it, I feel better.

The [fictional] Vermilion One Iron Mine near where O’Connor lives is being investigated as a potential site for nuclear waste disposal. [Indian Country has often been considered for hazardous waste sites. The poverty and show more political disenfranchisement of Native Americans make them more tempting targets than more politically astute and well-funded constituencies.] Protestors at the mine site seem dangerous. Several mining officials have received threatening notes. And now Lauren Cavanaugh, sister of Max, who runs the mine, is missing. Max contacts Cork, an old friend, to ask him to help find her. It turns out he does, along with five other bodies.

Cork is a retired county sheriff and is now a private investigator. He’s a widower with three grown children, and is alone except for the family dog. He is also part Ojibwe. The current sheriff, Marsha Dross, asks him to work for her to help solve the murders; his contacts among the Ojibwe will help greatly.

Eventually Cork is able to solve both mysteries: not only the recent murder of Lauren but the older killings as well. In the course of doing so, however, he requires help from an Ojibwe Medicine Man named Henry Meloux, who, well past ninety years old, has helped out Cork all his life.

Evaluation: The suspense level isn’t particularly high in this book, but I enjoyed it for all of its other positive attributes. I liked the way Krueger was able to portray the emotional state of a man suddenly adrift in life with his wife and children gone. I found the Ojibwe customs interesting, and I really liked learning about mining in a very non-technical way as well. show less