MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
This audiobook highlights the unique bond between a father and son and how society’s preconceptions interfere with and ultimately strengthen that bond. Narrated masterfully by David Chandler, this prequel to William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series grabs listeners and ensures a rapt audience from start to finish. Chandler’s understated style captures the relationship between 12-year old Cork and his father, Sheriff Liam O’Connor. The audiobook also highlights the prejudices and emotions that erupt in rural Minnesota when the sheriff must investigate the death of a man while also preserving his son’s respect. Chandler uses a measured pace and well-timed inflections to bring the story to its satisfying conclusion. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
06/14/2021
At the start of bestseller Krueger’s suspenseful 18th mystery, a prequel, featuring former sheriff turned PI Cork O’Connor (after 2018’s Desolation Mountain), 12-year-old Cork, who’s one-quarter Ojibwe, makes a horrifying discovery while hiking one day in 1963 in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest—the hanged corpse of Big John Manydeeds, the uncle of a friend of Cork’s from the Iron Lake Reservation. With no signs of foul play, the death is quickly ruled a suicide, especially after evidence is found that Big John, a recovering alcoholic, had fallen off the wagon. Cork’s father, the Tamarack County sheriff, adopts that conclusion, but Cork isn’t so sure, especially after seeing an apparition he believes might be the dead man’s troubled spirit at the place where Big John died. He investigates, ultimately convincing his father that the case may be a homicide and that it’s reasonable to look into those with a possible murder motive. Krueger makes the youthful version of his lead plausible, as well as his detective abilities. Longtime fans will relish Cork’s rich backstory. Agent: Danielle Egan-Miller, Brown & Miller Literary Assoc. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Lightning Strike explores the tender relationship between father and son. It is written with grace and understanding. It is a stunning novel that will captivate readers even if they’ve never read a Cork O’Connor mystery.” —Denver Post
"William Kent Krueger is a master storyteller at the top of his game with Lightning Strike. A pitch perfect, richly imagined story that is both an edge-of-your-seat thriller and an evocative, emotionally-charged coming of age tale that explores the complex bonds between fathers and sons and the long simmering animosities of the past. This is a beautifully written novel that packs a powerful punch. I loved it." —Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Four Winds
“Marvelous. I’ve long been a fan of William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series, and this essential novel allows us to witness how young Cork developed and matured. Not just a story of fathers and sons, it’s also a tale of Natives and settlers and how laws such as the Indian Relocation Act influenced both...A gripping, heartbreaking tale with beautiful writing, vividly drawn characters, and a story you won’t be able to put down." —David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Edgar and Anthony Award-nominated author of Winter Counts
"Lightning Strike is a brilliantly plotted, deeply emotional mystery that opens strong, building more intensity with each passing page. This is William Kent Krueger at his best, and the perfect spot for new readers to enter the series." —The Real Book Spy
"Poignant, powerful, and mesmerizing... Krueger skillfully blends big, suspenseful moments with quiet, keenly observed insights into human nature. This novel is rich with wisdom about right and wrong, choice and change, fathers and sons, and the ways in which loss can shape us as profoundly as love." —Amazon Book Review
"A brilliant achievement, and one every crime reader and writer needs to celebrate." —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Madess of Crowds
“There’s a feel that you get from a master craftsman, a saddle that sits right, a fly rod that casts with its own agility, or a series of books written with a grace and precision so stunning that you’d swear the stories were your own.” —Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire series
“Among thoughtful readers, William Kent Krueger holds a very special place in the pantheon. Kent showed the mystery reading world that a protagonist need not be a chain-smoking loner with lots of emotional baggage but he could be an honest and admirable family man doing his best for all the right reasons.” — C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Krueger’s gift is to illustrate the dynamics of history and culture through up-close-and-personal stories.” —The New York Journal of Books
“This sensitive, moving prequel introduces and draws readers into the series. Krueger has written another perceptive coming-of-age novel, the poignant story of a father and son trying to understand each other.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Krueger winds back time, literally and symbolically . . . with . . . suspenseful measured pacing, his accomplished prose and his carefully crafted plot.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Dennis Lehane
Pitch-perfect, wonderfully evocative. . . . In Frank Drum’s journey away from the shores of childhood—a journey from which he can never return—we recognize the heartbreaking price of adulthood and its ‘wisdoms.’ I loved this book.
Library Journal
★ 07/01/2021
This prequel to Krueger's "Cork O'Connor" series begins in January 1989. Cork, the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, MN, reflects on the case that changed his relationship with his father in the summer of 1963, when Cork was 12. In '63, his father Liam is the sheriff; when Cork finds the hanging body of Big John Manydeeds, Liam investigates. Liam is pulled between Tamarack County's white residents, who think Manydeeds was drunk and killed himself, and the county's Ojibwe residents, who don't believe that Manydeeds, who was Ojibwe, died by suicide. Liam searches for logical answers, while Cork grapples with questions about death and witnesses a shadow that haunts the Lightning Strike site where Manydeeds was found. Cork, who is one-quarter Ojibwe, finds spiritual answers and provides clues to his white father, who will always be an outsider in the county. Anger is the only response for a 12-year-old when his father's decisions seem to put community before family. VERDICT This sensitive, moving prequel introduces and draws readers into the series. Krueger (Ordinary Grace; This Tender Land) has written another perceptive coming-of-age novel, the poignant story of a father and son trying to understand each other. It provides Cork O'Connor's backstory for those who haven't read the series.—Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
This audiobook highlights the unique bond between a father and son and how society’s preconceptions interfere with and ultimately strengthen that bond. Narrated masterfully by David Chandler, this prequel to William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series grabs listeners and ensures a rapt audience from start to finish. Chandler’s understated style captures the relationship between 12-year old Cork and his father, Sheriff Liam O’Connor. The audiobook also highlights the prejudices and emotions that erupt in rural Minnesota when the sheriff must investigate the death of a man while also preserving his son’s respect. Chandler uses a measured pace and well-timed inflections to bring the story to its satisfying conclusion. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine