Vermilion Drift - William Kent Krueger

Krueger's next nail-biting novel of suspense has Cork O'Connor investigating a series of decades-old murders and their connection to his past. nWilliam Kent Krueger's gripping tale of suspense begins with a recurring nightmare, a gun, and a wound in the earth so deep and horrific that it has a name: Vermilion Drift. nWhen the Department of Energy puts an underground iron mine on its short list of potential sites for storage of nuclear waste, a barrage of protest erupts in Tamarack County, Minnesota, and Cork is hired as a security consultant.

n n Deep in the mine during his first day on the job, Cork stumbles across a secret room that contains the remains of six murder victims. Five appear to be nearly half a century old--connected to what the media once dubbed The Vanishings, a series of unsolved disappearances in the summer of 1964, when Cork's father was sheriff in Tamarack County. But the sixth has been dead less than a week.

What's worse, two of the bodies--including the most recent victim--were killed using Cork's own gun, one handed down to him from his father. n n As Cork searches for answers, he must dig into his own past and that of his father, a well-respected man who harbored a ghastly truth. Time is running out, however.

New threats surface, and unless Cork can unravel the tangled thread of clues quickly, more death is sure to come. n n Vermilion Drift is a powerful novel, filled with all the mystery and suspense for which Krueger has won so many awards. A poignant portrayal of the complexities of family life, it's also a sobering reminder that even those closest to our hearts can house the darkest--and deadliest--of secrets.n