RED KNIFE: a review

Red Knife

By William Kent Krueger

Atria, September, 2008,

Hard Cover, 310 pages $24.00

ISBN: 978-1-4165-5674-9



Review by Carl Brookins



So readers know, Mr. Krueger and I are very well-acquainted. This is his
eighth entry in a powerful award-winning series about Corcoran O'Conner,
family man, ex-sheriff, sometime private investigator, and an upright and
very moral man. O'Connor's life is complicated by his staunch roots in both
Native American and Caucasian ethnicity. His life is also complicated by his
two daughters, a son, and his feisty, bright and somewhat uptight wife, Jo.
Their communication at times seems as obtuse as between strangers from
different worlds. There are times in this story when this reader would like
to reach out and kick O'Connor in his well-shaped backside.



Krueger has carefully shaped each episode in this long family saga to
explore significant and troubling aspects of our modern society. Red Knife
is no different. It begins with a significant and violent episode in the
life of a young Ojibwa boy. The story then commences to explore in some
detail the influences of violence in our society. The genius of this
storyteller, aside from his consummate storytelling skills is that he is
careful to avoid sweeping polemical statements. The novel examines some of
the causes of violence in intimate and personal ways. Then it goes beyond
the acts themselves, almost always leaving to reader to sort out her or his
own reactions to the violence. Red Knife commences to also explore how
violence can affect individuals not directly engaged in the violence itself;
family members, friends and even enemies, members of the law enforcement
community, and those on the periphery. And always there is that layer of
intimate struggle for understanding and connection between Jo and Cork O'Connor.



I don't wish to suggest this is a heavily violent novel. It is not. It is,
rather, a smoothly written, carefully plotted and laid out examination of an
intimate group of individuals, some of whom are family members, some not,
and their responses to the violence they experience and observe. Krueger has
produced a thoughtful, richly textured human novel, one that most readers, I
suspect, will remember and think about long after they close the book.


--
carl brookins
carlbrookins@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.carlbrookins.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyers, Bloody Halls, Case of the Deceiving Don


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