Red Knife A Cork O'Connor mystery

The conventional symbols for darkness and illumination are reversed in Arnaldur Indridason's austere Icelandic police procedurals. In this arctic land where the natives "yearned for the cold black of night and the deep winter," shadows bring understanding, and nothing good comes with the light of day. Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, the compassionate detective in this remarkable series, draws the curtains against the "relentless May sun" in THE DRAINING LAKE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95), instinctively blaming its warming rays for drying up Lake Kleifarvatn, where a hydrologist studying the shrinking water levels has turned up a human skeleton with a hole in its skull. (In point of fact, an earthquake opened fissures in the lake bed - suggestive of yet more alarming metaphors.) Were it not for the vintage Soviet radio transmitter found with the bones, the police would be inclined to write off these macabre findings as just another anonymous suicide. "It isn't considered significant in this country if people disappear," Erlendur dryly notes. But as someone who watched his only brother swept from sight in a winter storm when they were children, the detective comes naturally to his role as champion of the disappeared and comforter of those who still wait for them. This is a man who, while giving his professional attention to long-forgotten missing persons cases, spends his quiet hours reading accounts of avalanches and other catastrophes that leave no trace of the lives they sweep away. In this book as in Indridason's previous ones (all translated with grave sensitivity by Bernard Scudder), Erlendur's effort to reclaim one lost soul opens a broader investigation into a neglected piece of Icelandic history. Here it's the "weird times" of the cold war, when Iceland was of strategic interest to both the United States, which kept a military base at Keflavik, and the Soviet Union, which had plenty of spies on the ground. Indridason reclaims this historical moment with a parallel narrative line recalling the bitter disillusionment of Icelandic students whose socialist ideals were betrayed when they went to study in East Germany. Once again, Erlendur's persistent search for something of inestimable value that has long been lost - from one woman's beloved fiancé to the political innocence of an entire generation - becomes the touchstone for Indridason's pursuit of the missing chapters of his national heritage. You want cold? You want cheerless? Leave Iceland to its sultry spring and decamp for the Siberian Territory. Stuart M. Kaminsky's endearing Russian bear of a detective, Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, is forced to voyage there in PEOPLE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS (Forge/Tom Doherty, $23.95) when a Canadian geologist is murdered after encountering a ghostly child deep below the earth in a diamond mine. The one-legged but indomitable Rostnikov is petrified of tunnels, yet he must avert the sabotage of Russia's diamond production before it affects the world market. ("I wonder," someone reflects, "if they ever have problems like this at DeBeers.") Faithful as ever to the split-focus formula of the police procedural, Kaminsky leaves it to Rostnikov's colleagues to untangle an intricate smuggling network connecting Moscow, Kiev and Botswana. Meanwhile, the chief inspector is dispatched to the wretched town of Devochka, which consists of eight identical single-story concrete buildings and a cracked concrete road to the mine. While some people can and do go mad in such places, Devochka inspires Kaminsky's sleuth to new levels of irony. Harsh environments are supposed to build strong character. But the seasons aren't "what they used to be" in the north woods of Minnesota where William Kent Krueger sets his rugged novels. Instead of toughening up over the long winter, citizens of the region's economically depressed mining and logging towns are turning mean-spirited and violent. In RED KNIFE (Atria, $25), ugly racial conflicts erupt when someone executes the leader of an Ojibwe youth gang and his wife. The culprits could be members of the Mexican drug cartel that's been using the Indian reservation as a depot, but there's so much hatred brewing here, it could be anyone. Cork O'Connor, a former sheriff whose Indian bloodline gives him tribal access, is one of those hometown heroes you rarely see (and can hardly believe in) anymore - someone so decent and true, he might restore his town's battered faith in the old values. No one shows you the ugly side of Alaska the way Stan Jones does in his somber novels about Nathan Active, an Eskimo state trooper posted back to Chukchi, his native village in the Arctic Circle. In FROZEN SUN (Bowhead, paper, $13.95), Nathan is sent to balmy Anchorage for computer training, giving him a chance to track down Grace Sikingik Palmer, a former "Miss North World" and onetime pride of the village, now rumored to be a homeless prostitute working Anchorage's infamous Four Street district. After giving her up for dead, Nathan learns that his fallen angel may be working in a fish-processing plant in the Aleutian Islands. It's a hellish place ("You not puke in here, you go in John," the line foreman warns Nathan), and Jones makes no attempt to prettify it. Just as he doesn't pretend to find anything remotely character-building in the conditions of those who have survived the unforgiving climate of the Arctic only to disappear on the streets. 'It isn't significant in this country if people disappear,' Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic detective dryly observes.

One The words on the note folded around the check in his wallet read: Here's $500. A retainer. I need your help. See me today. The note and the money were from Alexander Kingbird, although it was signed Kakaik , which was the name of an Ojibwe war chief. It meant Hawk. Five hundred dollars was a pretty sound enticement, but Cork O'Connor would have gone for nothing, just to satisfy his curiosity. Although the note didn't mention Kingbird's situation, it was easy to read between the lines. In Tamarack County, unless you were stupid or dead you knew that Alexander Kingbird and the Red Boyz were in trouble. How exactly, Cork wondered, did Kingbird think he could help? Kingbird and his wife, Rayette, lived on the Iron Lake Reservation. Their home was a nice prefab, constructed to look like a log cabin and set back a hundred yards off the road, behind a stand of red pines. A narrow gravel lane cut straight through the trees to the house. As Cork drove up, his headlights swung across a shiny black Silverado parked in front. He knew it belonged to Tom Blessing, Kingbird's second-in-command. It was Blessing who'd delivered the note that afternoon. And it was Blessing who opened the door when Cork knocked. "About time," Blessing said. He wasn't much more than a kid, twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Long black hair falling freely down his back. Tall, lean, tense. He reminded Cork of a sapling that in the old days might have been used for a rabbit snare: delicately balanced, ready to snap. "The note said today. It's still today, Tom," Cork said. "My name's Waubishash." Each of the Red Boyz, on joining the gang, took the name of an Ojibwe war chief. "Let him in." The order was delivered from behind Blessing, from inside the house. Blessing stepped back and Cork walked in. Alexander Kingbird stood on the far side of his living room. "Thank you for coming." He was twenty-five, by most standards still a young man, but his eyes weren't young at all. They were as brown as rich earth and, like earth, they were old. He wore his hair in two long braids tied at the end with strips of rawhide, each hung with an owl feather. A white scar ran from the corner of his right eye to the lobe of his ear. Cork had heard it happened in a knife fight while he was a guest of the California penal system. Kingbird glanced at Blessing. "You can go." Blessing shook his head. "Until this is over, you shouldn't be alone." "Are you planning to shoot me, Mr. O'Connor?" "I hadn't thought of it, but I may be the only guy in this county who hasn't." Kingbird smiled. "I'll be fine, Waubishash. Go on." Blessing hesitated. Maybe he was working on an argument; if so, he couldn't quite put it together. He finally nodded, turned, and left. A minute later, Cork heard the Silverado's big engine turn over, followed by the sound of the tires on gravel. Everything got quiet then, except for a baby cooing in a back room and the low, loving murmur of a woman in response. "Mind taking your shoes off?" Kingbird said. "New carpet and Rayette's kind of particular about keeping it clean." "No problem." Cork slipped his Salomons off and set them beside a pair of Red Wing boots and a pair of women's Skechers, which were on a mat next to the door. "Sit down," Kingbird said. Cork took a comfortable-looking easy chair upholstered in dark green. Kingbird sat on the sofa. "You know why you're here?" he said to Cork. "Instead of twenty questions, why don't you just tell me." "Buck Reinhardt wants me dead." "You blame him?" "I'm not responsible for his daughter dying." "No, but you're hiding the man who is." "And you know this how?" "Popular speculation. And he's one of the Red Boyz." "I want to talk to Reinhardt." "Why?" Kingbird sat tall. He wore a green T-shirt, military issue it looked like. On his forearm was a tattoo. A bulldog -- the Marine Corps devil dog -- with USMC below. "I have a daughter of my own," he said. His eyes moved a hair to the right, in the direction from which the cooing had come. "I understand how he feels." "I don't think you do. Your daughter is still alive." "My daughter will also never use drugs." "In that, I wish you luck." "Then give him what he wants. Give him the man responsible for his daughter's death. Give him Lonnie Thunder." The suggestion seemed to have no effect on Kingbird. "Will you arrange a meeting?" "Why me?" "Because you're not just another white man. You've got some Ojibwe blood in your veins. Also, you used to be sheriff around here and I figure that gives you a certain standing. And -- " He held up a card, one of the business cards Cork routinely tacked to bulletin boards around Aurora. " -- it's how you earn your living." "How do I know, and how can Buck be sure, that you won't just shoot him as soon as he shows up?" "Let him name the place and the time. You'll be there to observe and to maintain the peace." "Five hundred dollars isn't nearly enough to get me to step between blazing guns." "I'll be unarmed. You make sure Reinhardt is, too. And the five hundred dollars is a retainer. When this meeting is done, you'll have another five hundred." Rayette Kingbird strolled into the room carrying her child. Misty had been born six months earlier. When Alexander Kingbird looked at his wife and his daughter, his face softened. Cork stood up. "Evening, Rayette." "Cork." "Bedtime for Misty?" She smiled. She was full-blood Ojibwe. Her life before Kingbird had been hard. Abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandparents she'd been into every kind of trouble imaginable. When Cork was sheriff of Tamarack County, he'd picked her up a few times, juvenile offenses. She'd skipped childhood through no fault of her own and he'd thought that any youth she might have had had been squeezed out long ago. Then she met Kingbird and married him and things changed. She looked young and she looked happy. "Past bedtime," she said. "She wants a kiss from her daddy." Rayette held the baby out and Kingbird took his daughter. He nuzzled her neck. She gurgled. He kissed her forehead. She squirmed. "Night, little turtle," he said. He handed her back to his wife. Rayette left with the child. Kingbird looked after them a moment, then turned to Cork. "We've named her Misty, but her real name is Tomorrow. Every child's name is Tomorrow. You, me, Buck Reinhardt, we're Yesterday. Kristi Reinhardt shouldn't have died. No child's life should be cut short of tomorrow." "Nice sentiment, Alex, but what are you going to offer Buck? What do I tell him that will make him agree to meet you?" He ignored the fact that Cork had used his given name, not the one he'd taken as a member of the Red Boyz. He said, "Tell him he will have justice. Tell him I give my word."Copyright (c) 2008 by William Kent Krueger Excerpted from Red Knife by William Kent Krueger All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.