Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger

 "It would be easy if we all had visions, or if we all believed in those who did. My own feeling is that faith was never meant to be easy."

                            -Father Mal Thorne, from the novel

This is my fourth in the Cork O'Connor mystery series---another winner! It is "creme de la crime" to borrow a term from the author's acknowledgments. I have no doubt I will eventually read every novel in this series. Cork and his family are like good friends now.

Charlotte Kane, a lovely teenage girl is found dead, her body frozen near Cork's town of Aurora, Minnesota (a place I know well by now). Solemn Winter Moon, a young Ojibwe who has a reputation as a wild and reckless teenager, is charged with her murder. Cork had been a close friend of Solemn's father, now deceased, and fervently believes in his innocence. He persuades his wife, Jo O'Connor, a lawyer who often gives legal assistance to the Ojibwe people, to defend Solemn. She, in turn, enlists her husband, the former sheriff, to investigate and hopefully find other suspects. And boy, does he ever find some! Just when you think Cork's found the murderer, the plot jerks you back into turning more pages.

Not only does Krueger develop characters you care about (and some you can hate!), but he also weaves a compelling mystery and paints vivid pictures of the natural environment of Northern Minnesota.

This book deserves my 5 rating, but I am bidding farewell to Cork for a while to go back to some of my favorite genre, historical fiction. I will return soon to Mercy Falls, book 5.