Cyndi J. (cyndij) reviewed on 10/24/2017 + 1031 more book reviews

BLOOD HOLLOW, by William Kent Krueger, is the fourth in the series featuring ex-sheriff "Cork" O'Connor. I found this book...odd. Krueger's characters are good, the sense of place is excellent; I had less success pinning it down to a certain time frame...there are references to cell phones, but there are good chunks of the plot that involve land lines. There's a strong religious element; Krueger has given Cork a problem with religion that we've seen in prior books but here religion is central to more than one character. I did pick up the villain (maybe I should say the ultimate villain) right away but I think that's just from reading a lot of mysteries. The plot seems unnecessarily convoluted to me - too many twists. I can't say more than that without including spoilers but for a small town where everyone knows everyone's business there are a lot of oblivious people. And the Aurora PD is sure having some problems hiring good personnel. Which leads into my next nitpick: in the last two books, O'Connor was seriously considering going back as sheriff and his wife was pretty angry, like divorce angry. As this book begins we learn he turned down the job, he thinks many times how happy he is not to wear the badge, but once again his name comes up, he's thinking about it, and Jo says "Sure whatever you want, honey". Krueger didn't convince me that reaction was real, or that Cork would continue flirting with it.

If you were a new reader to this series, you'd be fine without reading the previous ones, and you wouldn't notice half of the nitpicks I just mentioned. I had a bunch of them, but they are mostly nitpicks, I still thought the overall story was interesting and the pacing is good. I'll see what the next one is like.

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