Windigo Island by William Kent Kreuger

 

I spent like the first two-thirds of this novel not sure whether I really wanted to finish it. I'm kinda a sucker for mysteries set in various and sundry Native American countries (yeah, like Hillerman ..) but I really wasn't sure how I felt about all the Anishinaabeg beliefs being portrayed as though they were objectively real--I don't believe in nothing, and having mystic stuff in a mystery novel seemed like a bit of a violation, or a category error. Last third grabbed me and held tight: The characters are well-drawn, and the budding romance is handled ably, and whatever gawds there may be know the various Native American peoples got many fuzzy ends of many lollipops, and the evolution of one crime method to another as society changes was deeply believable. The couple of instances of "Hello, crime novel from 2014" not withstanding, I feel pretty good about this book, and the chances I'll look into other novels in the series are high.