{"id":682,"date":"2012-08-29T22:22:12","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T04:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=682"},"modified":"2012-08-29T22:22:12","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T04:22:12","slug":"william-kent-krueger-trickster%e2%80%99s-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/william-kent-krueger-trickster%e2%80%99s-point\/","title":{"rendered":"William Kent Krueger: Trickster\u2019s Point"},"content":{"rendered":"
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William Kent Krueger is one of the best pure storytellers I can think of.\u00a0 The way he presents each character in his books makes them at the same time ordinary and mythic.\u00a0 His central character, Cork O\u2019Connor, is no exception, a peaceful warrior detective who has weathered losing his wife and has maintained a stable inner core through all his travails.\u00a0 He is a hunter and a discoverer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In this story, Cork has been out hunting with an old friend, Jubal Little, who ends up dead thanks to an arrow through his chest. Jubal is not only Cork\u2019s friend but the first candidate for Governor in Minnesota with Native blood, making his death big news. \u00a0It becomes clear that\u00a0 Jubal and Cork\u2019s relationship was both long and complicated,\u00a0 and the story of this novel is essentially the story of a friendship.\u00a0 Cork is the main suspect in Jubal\u2019s death as he had stayed with Jubal while he died instead of going for help.\u00a0 Also, the arrow, handmade, is distinctively one of Cork\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Anyone who is a faithful reader of this series will be fully aware that Cork is not the culprit and even were you to stumble upon this book without having read any of the other books, it\u2019s still unlikely that the first suspect is the guilty suspect (repeated viewings of Law & Order<\/em> would confirm that fact).\u00a0 However, things look bleak for Cork and of course he is on a mission to discover Jubal\u2019s murderer; the stakes are just a bit higher since it\u2019s himself he\u2019ll exonerate.<\/p>\n

Along with the story of Jubal\u2019s death, which, under the guidance of a less gifted writer would be plenty to occupy the reader, Krueger instead combines it with \u00a0the story of Jubal\u2019s life.\u00a0 It\u2019s a life closely tied to one Winona Crane, a classmate of Cork\u2019s, and a beautiful, troubled girl that Jubal and Cork have both loved or admired (in Cork\u2019s case) from afar.\u00a0 Everything Cork does, Jubal does better, including loving Winona.\u00a0 The two have an intense and seemingly unbreakable connection.<\/p>\n

Krueger\u2019s explication of Jubal\u2019s choices, good and bad, and the slow peeling back of his character, are the true mystery of this novel.\u00a0 Krueger is so adept at characterization that the surprises of Jubal and Winona are as deeply psychological as anything written by Ruth Rendell or Elizabeth George.\u00a0 Unlike Elizabeth George, however, Krueger makes this look easy.\u00a0 I\u2019m just telling a story, he seems to be saying.<\/p>\n

The story is a great one but it\u2019s the people in it that are memorable.\u00a0 Some of their choices are chilling or inspirational, and the final choice made by one of the characters at the end of the novel is a heartbreaker.\u00a0 Someday I will finish a Krueger book not<\/em> in tears, I suppose, but this is not that day.\u00a0 Settle in for another great read from Mr. Krueger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Kent Krueger is one of the best pure storytellers I can think of.\u00a0 The way he presents each character in his books makes them at the same time ordinary and mythic.\u00a0 His central character, Cork O\u2019Connor, is no exception, a peaceful warrior detective who has weathered losing his wife and has maintained a stable … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-p-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}