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Iron Lake  By  cover art

Iron Lake

By: William Kent Krueger
Narrated by: David Chandler
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Publisher's summary

Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.

Solve another case with Cork O'Connor.
©1998 William Kent Krueger (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"Krueger makes Cork a real person beneath his genre garments, mostly by showing him dealing with the needs of his two very different teenage daughters. And the author's deft eye for the details of everyday life brings the town and its peculiar problems to vivid life." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Iron Lake

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    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing Book

I gave this book 100% when basically I just wanted to stop the story. Finishing it was a relief to the ever-droning plot line.
Don’t waste your energy hoping it will get better. It doesn’t . I broke my own rule of exiting a boring book early on!

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not good enough to begin a lengthy series.

I like the setting, the atmosphere of a small town under the winter storm is very fascinating. The opening scene of wendigo and bear hunting is engaging and I have high hope for the series.

My interest diminishes as I get to know the main characters. Cork is just so incompetent for a man of his background, ex-sheriff and longtime Chicago cop with college degree, to the point that I think most of his bad decisions isn’t his fault but because the author and the plot forces him to commit actions and choices that contradict to the core nature of his characters. I mean, he is blatantly stupid in some occasions. Next to him is Jo, his estranged wife and one of the most unlikeable characters I’ve read about. I’ve been rooting for her to die off throughout the second half of the book. Other minor characters don’t matter, apart from Molly, who’s playing the role of Cork’s angel.

So the characters are bad, but the plot is worse. It’s contrived and convoluted. So formulaic and improbable that there is little suspense. I realize early who is the villain, who is going to live and die, how it’s likely to end, so what’s the point of listening to a mystery novel.

Also the narrator doesn’t make it easy to listen to. His breathing interrupts the story all the time, which almost made me drop the book from the prologue, only to be tolerated throughout the story. His delivery is ordinary most of the time, and jarringly amateurish sometimes. It boggles my mind why the author agreed to let him performed the whole series.

Perhaps the later installations are better than this debut novel, other wise Cork wouldn’t go on for dozen more books. But I think I will stop here and find something else to read.

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Terrible! Depressing

I didn't just dislike this book......I hated it. It was a journey of how big a looser the main character was. For someone that was the former sherif, Cork made the dumbest choices. His character lost all of his dignity, his family and the only good character was killed off. There is nothing that would deserve the ratings that Audilbe has given it. Not an enjoyable read.

Did I mention it is bad?

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    2 out of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book . . .

. . . but it left me disappointed. First of all, it dragged for a long time. There was no tension or real suspense until the last 1/4 of the book. I don't think I'll read any more in the series, despite the fact that I have the next two books in my library - that's how disappointed I was by this book.

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Sad

I bought this book based a review by someone who said it was a superior series to the Craig Johnston Walt Longmire series. (Which I loved) Couldn't have been further from the truth. So disappointed.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Too manY characters

Did not finish this book. Did not care for the narrator and there were too many characters to keep track of.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Ending.

Listened to to the whole audio book. Enjoyed it but...,ending sucked. Why do authors always have to be so crabby. Read a Stephen King novel. Those never turn out joyous.

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Ham handed with mediocre reader

Forced myself to finish just to see if ended predictably...it did. only surprise was authorly sledgehammer to force expected ending. Mustache twirling bad guy at end is headbangingly painful.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Glad it was a Daily Deal

I forced myself to finish listening. The characters were not developed enough for me to care about or the situations they were in, which were predictable and trite. The Narrator made the men sound sarcastic and snide and the women snippy and arrogant.

Skip this series and listen to the Dave Robicheaux books by James Lee Burke. That is who Krueger tried to create in Cork.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting plot; cliche dialogue; annoying narrator

Interesting plot, but too slow in the first half. I understand that with series, the first book takes time building the characters and setting. But this plodded for too long. The characters talk and behave like caricatures. They didn’t feel real at all. The descriptive passages were beautiful in spots, though, and added depth to the story. I didn’t care for the narrator. The men sounded like lunk heads and the women all sounded snotty and snippy.

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