Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

 

This is the very first novel Krueger wrote with Cork O'Connor as a main, and while there is a lot of what makes the later novels go in this one, things are less spiritual and somewhat grimmer, and the family drama stuff is much less present. There are a lot of people involved in the various nested/connected conspiracies, more than seems strictly plausible (though this never really caused any trouble for me in the way of sustaining my suspension of disbelief) and things mostly don't end well for them, and there are some bad endings for people who are arguably more or less innocent. But it's a murder mystery and there are people who are willing to kill and willing to keep killing, so it's not like unreasonable. It's interesting seeing something this early, more than fifteen novels ago, and this turned out to be a superb novel, more than enough to help me shake free some of the crap I've been reading. I hope some of the other books I have by authors I don't know turn out to be worth my time.