Iron Lake: Cork O'Connor, Book 1

Excellent well written mystery thriller. I'm not quite as dumb as Jo so I figured it out long before she did, but she was rather distracted. The hero of this series isn't your typical dashing, daring, unbelievable character, but rather just a normal guy with normal guy faults and strengths. That makes him perfect for this series. I look forward to more.

I'm a HUGE CJ Box fan. As I listened to this narrator - David Chandler (also the voice of Box's Joe Pickett) I had to keep reminding myself this was Cork nor Joe. Cork and Joe are brothers from different mothers.

Finding Krueger and his large collection of Cork novels I feel like I've found long lost CJ Box stories. Both involve rural outdoors and a straight arrow hero with a family. Just enough differences in the two (Joe and Cork) to make all the books interesting.

I have been re-visiting in audio the first volumes in some of my favorite series! William Kent Krueger's is as good as I remembered, and, with David Chandler's terrific narration, listening is even better than reading. "Iron Lake" is full of non-stop suspense and introduces characters who grab your interest and sympathy at once. Ex-Sheriff Cork O'Connor is a decent man with an interesting cultural heritage, a troubled past, and a complicated family life. You'll want to follow him anywhere!

This is my first book by William Kent Krueger and I was really pleased. I really enjoyed the background of this upper Minnesota setting and the Native Indian culture. I figured out the "whodunit" too soon, but the story was still interesting. There were some parts of the story where my heart was really beating fast so I am looking forward to continuing this series. I love the main character, Cork O'Connor. The narrator, David Chandler, did a good job. I don't remember him using different voices for the different characters, but the writing was so well done that I always knew whose voice was talking. The dialogues were very well done and fun to listen to throughout the story.

This is a great book. This is were it all started and I think that you all will love this one.
Roger

A great narrator adds to this story, but reading it would not have taken anything away from this heart gripping tale. It's a story of a good man, that has lost most everything of his way of life; his job, his wife, his home and is trying to hang on to his children. It's a suspenseful thriller/mystery that explains the circumstances of each character as you try to figure out, just who can be trusted. With lots of twists and turns along the way,
you can see the perspective of each person as the story unfolds, with greed, murder, deception, and love, all entangled in this complex mystery.
With a justifiable ending, it leaves you glad you listened to it, but not feeling warm and fuzzy... mainly thankful there's another in the series to go to.....cause you won't want to leave Iron Lake just yet.

My sister recommended this book and she was right...it is a good read.

The plot allowed me to think I knew Who did it" and Why? Then I was wrong. It carried me along thought snowing nights and ice filled lakes. I seemed real in person and deed.

I will look for this author again and return to this listen again.

I live in Northern Wisconsin and been to the range many times so it was easy to picture the scenes and the people and the town. The character were especially colorful and I enjoyed the mysteries, twists and turns of the plot.

The main character has such an interesting complex personality that I want to listen to the next book right away so I can find out more about him.
I love that part of the country and now I can't wait to get back up to the Boundary Waters as soon as spring arrives (That's late June up there)

Northern Minnesotan dialect

One half chapter seemed to be repeated right after itself but slightly differently. I listened to it 3 times and I never did figure it out

This was an enjoyable mystery, although it tends to wander a bit and drones on too long about the plight of the Ojibwe tribe and their exploitation by whites, all of which is probably true but for the most part, tangential to the plot. On the other hand, his descriptions of the wilds of Minnesota and its history add to the drama. I understood that this was the first of a series with Cork O'Connor as the protagonist, so however dire his situation appeared to be at any point, I knew somehow he would survive. I liked that he and his wife were multidimensional, having both great strengths and evident weaknesses. Many of their adversaries, however, are more one-dimensional, purely cunning and evil, without any sign of conscience. The female leads are both very beautiful, and sex is always passionate, thrilling, and uncomplicated. The plot is intricate, but fairly predictable, and the ending was, for me, typical of the genre, not at all unexpected. I was rather surprised to learn that Iron Lake won the 1999 Anthony Award for best first novel. The quality of the prose does not compare to that of Louise Penny or Michael Connelly. However, from other reviews, I infer that the writing becomes stronger with time, and note that subsequent books in this series won Anthony Awards for best novel of the year in 2005 & 2006. His latest, Trickster's Point, the twelfth in the series, is currently #12 on the NY Times hardcover best sellers list. So I'd be willing to give a later book in the series a try sometime, but am in no rush to do so. David Chandler was an excellent narrator; I enjoyed listening to him.

It was a good mystery but I had a hard time sticking with this one.  The main character is so down on his luck that it is a little depressing.  It was not bad just a little slow and some parts seemed to wonder away from the story.  The ending really saved this book for me. 

The narrator did an good job.  Nice and smooth but no differences in the voices. From what the reviewers say this series gets better, I will probably read one of his later books that has a different narrator.