39. SInister Graves by Marcie R. Rendon

#3 Cash Blackbear

listened on Libby

240 pgs.

2022
Historical Fiction Mystery
Finished 8/18/2026
Goodreads rating: 3.98
My rating: 4
Setting: 1970s Minnesota/ND in/near Ojibwe land

My comments: I like this series.  Cash Blackbear is so imperfect ....and real.  She drinks too much.  She sleeps around too much.  She's had a really tough life, being hoisted from one non-Native American foster home to another.  None of them were "good."  And she's only 19.  Talk about a tough cookie!  She lives to drink beer and play pool.  In this episode, while looking for the identity of a drowned Native American girls, she is thrust into a "holy roller" type small church in the middle of nowhere with a really odd preacher and his wife.  The story moves quickly and takes quite an interesting turn....and then it's over, so quickly!

Goodreads synopsis: Set in 1970s Minnesota on the White Earth Reservation, Pinckley Prize–winner Marcie R. Rendon’s gripping new mystery follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, as she attempts to discover the truth about the disappearances of Native girls and their newborns.

A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe.

Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.

When Cash happens upon two small graves in the yard of a rural, “speak-in-tongues kinda church,” Cash is pulled into the lives of the malevolent pastor and his troubled wife while yet another Native woman dies in a mysterious manner.

12. Girl Gone Missing by Marcie R. Rendon

#2 Cash Blackbear

listened on Audible

208 pgs.

2019
Adult Historical Fiction Mystery
Finished 3/5/2026
Goodreads rating: 3.97
My rating: 4
Setting: North Dakota/Minnesota Line - both sides of the Red River

My comments: darn, no notes.

Goodreads synopsis: Nineteen-year-old Cash Blackbear helps law enforcement solve the mysterious disappearance of a local girl from Minnesota's Red River Valley.

1970s, Fargo-Moorhead: it’s the tail end of the age of peace and love, but Cash Blackbear isn’t feeling it. Bored by her freshman classes at Moorhead State College, Cash just wants to play pool, learn judo, chain-smoke, and be left alone. But when one of Cash’s classmates vanishes without a trace, Cash, whose dreams have revealed dangerous realities in the past, can’t stop envisioning terrified girls begging for help. Things become even more intense when an unexpected houseguest starts crashing in her living room: a brother she didn’t even know was alive, from whom she was separated when they were taken from the Ojibwe White Earth Reservation as children and forced into foster care.

When Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian and friend, asks for Cash’s help with the case of the missing girl, she must override her apprehension about leaving her hometown—and her rule to never get in somebody else’s car—in order to discover the truth about the girl’s whereabouts. Can she get to her before it’s too late?

4. Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie

listened on Audible while sick in Tucson

371 pgs. (9:49)

2023
Adult contemporary mystery
Finished 1/22/2025
Goodreads rating: 3.84
My rating: 4
Setting: 2008 northeastern Oklahoma

My comments: A queer Cherokee archaeologist/investigator for the BIA returns home to her native Oklahoma after three years to search for her missing sister.  This one got a little slow in more than one place, but ultimately was pretty decent storytelling, adding fuel to the fire in the history of missing Native American females, which has been going on - and almost completely ignored - for years and years.

Goodreads synopsis:  A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister.

There are secrets in the land.

As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own.

While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.

When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women.

But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her back. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.

The truth will be unearthed.

59. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

listened on Audible

307 pgs.

2023
Adult Mystery
Finished 6/26/24
Goodreads rating: 4.13
My rating: 4
Setting: Rural Maine (Rt. 9 north of Bangor) and Nova Scotia

My comments: Two voices, 1960 and perhaps 2000?  A four-year-old Micmac girl is kidnapped by a woman who has had many miscarriages and of course is slightly off.  The family of the little girl, Ruthie, (both parents, two brothers and a sister) never get over the feeling that she is still alive.  She is raised by the kidnapper and her husband as their own child, the mother being an odd woman who's super afraid that something is going to happen to now-Norma.  The story keeps switching back-and-forth between Ruthie/Norma and Joe, her two year older brother, who blames himself for her disappearance and has had an unhappy life because of the guilt he feels.  He's a good person, they are a good family, but it takes them almost five decades to reunite.  Such a sad story, but a really good one, too...

Goodreads synopsis:  A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.  

42. Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

A Reese Witherspoon YA Pick

listened on Audible (didn't want to wait for library WL)

narrated by Isabella Star LaBlanc -  Fantastic narrator - whether it be a male voice, a female, Native American inflections, Native American language.  Just wonderful!

Unabridged audio (14:13)
2021
496 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 4/20/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.48 - 6582 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary shores of Lake Superior, Michigan, on an island and on the mainland

First line/s: "I am a frozen statue of a girl in the woods.  Only my eyes moving, darting from the gun to their startled expression."

My comments: Fantastic narrator, and wow, fantastic story.  Definitely a mystery, definitely a story of family and relationships, great insight into indigenous American thinking both spiritual and historical, and thoughtful, teeth-clenching glimpses into the greed and ravages of methamphetamine.  Incredibly well-told story a bout a super-smart, savvy female athlete advocate for her Ojibwa people. And this Angeline Boulley's DEBUT novel!

Goodreads synopsis:  As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother.
          The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, certain details don’t add up and she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation.
          Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, but secretly pursues her own investigation, tracking down the criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home.
          Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

Picture Book - We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom

2021 CALDECOTT WINNER

Illustrated by Michaela Goade

2020 Roaring Brook Press

HC $17.99

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.53 - 2103 ratings

My rating:  5
Endpapers: Bright Yellow

1^st line/s:  "Water is the first medicine, Nokomis told me."

My comments:  Gorgeous, just gorgeous.  Tristan (10) and I read this together, and as we turned each page we gasped at the beauty of the illustrations.  It led to a wonderful discussion of what's been happening, which Tristan had no idea about. I'm not crazy about the title, and I'm not even sure why. But that's only a silly little negative.  Exceptional book.

Goodreads:  Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade.

Water is the first medicine.
It affects and connects us all . . .

When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth
And poison her people's water, one young water protector
Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource.

86. Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon

listened on Audible
narrated by Lauren Ezzo and Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Unabridged audio (11:46)
2020 Lake Union Publishing
348 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 5/27/2020
Goodreads rating:  4.52 - 3358 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting:  1853 Overland Trail, Missouri to Utah

First line/s:  "The wheel is in pieces.  It's not the first time one of the wagons has lost an axle or broken a rim since our journey began in May, but it's a long, dry stretch with no grazing and it's not a good place to stop."

My comments:  1853.  The Overland Trail.  I loved the writing and the narration of this powerful story.  Much of it was based on real people, native and white, who embarked on the arduous journey from Missouri to Utah and beyond in the 1850s.  The two protagonists, Naomi and John, both have strong voices beautifully written.  Such highs and lows in the narrative, which truly made me realize this was the way of the world during this time period for the people who embarked on this unbelievable trip.  I am impressed and humbled and so glad that I read this book.

Goodreads synopsis:  In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.  
          The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.                   But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.          When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.

31. Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown

listened to audio/Audible
narrated by Heather Henderson
Unabridged audio (11:00)
2014 NAL
368 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction (based on a real person)
Finished 2/16/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.96 - 811 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: 1676+ Massachusetts Bay Colony

First line/s:  "Later, Mary will trace the first signs of the Lord's displeasure back to a hot July morning in 1672 when she pauses on the way to the barn to watch the sun rise burnt orange over the meetinghouse."

My comments:  Historical fiction, based on a factual person, Mary Rowlandson, who was captured by Indians in the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1670s.  Though loosely based on the facts, we get a good glimpse of King Phillip's War and Puritanism in the New England in this time period.  Such harsh religious fervor!I would've never made it living in this time period without being beheaded.  I enjoyed listening to this, though I think there were many repetitious segments that could have been deleted.  I've been enjoying some well written historical fiction lately, and I hope I'll be able to continue to find more.

Goodreads synopsis:  She suspects that she has changed too much to ever fit easily into English society again. The wilderness has now become her home. She can interpret the cries of birds. She has seen vistas that have stolen away her breath. She has learned to live in a new, free way.... 
          Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1676. Even before Mary Rowlandson is captured by Indians on a winter day of violence and terror, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan community. Now, her home destroyed, her children lost to her, she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader, made a pawn in the on-going bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Battling cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected kindness. To her confused surprise, she is drawn to her captors’ open and straightforward way of life, a feeling further complicated by her attraction to a generous, protective English-speaking native known as James Printer. All her life, Mary has been taught to fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her.
          Based on the compelling true narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Flight of the Sparrow is an evocative tale that transports the reader to a little-known time in early America and explores the real meaning of freedom, faith, and acceptance.

Picture Book - We Are Grateful Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell

A Seibert Honor Book
Illustrated by Frank Lessac

2018 Charlesbridge

HC $17.99

32 thick pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.28 - 671 ratings

My rating:  5
Endpapers:  Deep, luscious dark purple/eggplant

1^st line/s:  "Cherokee people say otsaliheligs (oh-jah-LEE-gah/we are grateful) to express gratitude.  It is a reminder to celebrate our blessings and reflect on struggles - daily, throughout the year, and across the seasons."

My comments: This book is GORGEOUS.  It details the lives of the Cherokee Nation through the seasons, giving the Cherokee words (and pronunciations right on the page, hooray!!), and the simple writing is beautiful.  You close the book with a good feeling, and you want to SHARE! I want to put some of these illustrations on my walls!

Goodreads:  A look at modern Native American life as told by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation
          The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the new year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. 
          Appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.

45. Spider Woman's Daugter by Anne Hillerman

Leaphorn &Chee #19
listened on Audible
read by Christina Delaine
Unabridged audio (9:53)
2013 Harper
301 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 5/15/2019
Goodreads rating:  3.97 - 9354 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: Contemporary Navajo reservation, New Mexico

First line/s:   " 'I get this call out of the blue.  A woman.  First, she reminds me that I saved her life.  Then she says she wants me to do her a favor...' "

My comments:  It took me a long while to get through this one. I listened to it. The narrator spoke with a strong Navajo accent for both Chee and Bernadette.  The pronunciation was slow and drawn out, and it wasn’t at all the voices or accents I’ve had in my head for them. It was too slow — slowed down the action, slowed down their thinking, slowed down the story. I didn’t like it. There were three or four places that 2+2 equaled 15, but it gave them clues in the right direction. Huh? A bit disconcerting. Not the same kind of writing, which is to be expected, but I’ll get used to it and continue on with the series.

Goodreads synopsis:  Legendary tribal sleuths Leaphorn and Chee are back! The supremely talented daughter of New York Times bestselling mystery author Tony Hillerman continues the popular series with this fresh new Navajo Country mystery-her debut novel-filled with captivating lore, startling suspense, bold new characters, vivid color, and rich atmosphere
          It happened in an instant: After a breakfast with colleagues, Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manualito saw a truck squeal into the parking lot and heard a crack of gunfire. When the dust cleared, someone very close to her was lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood.
          With the victim in the hospital fighting for his life, every officer in the squad and the local FBI office are hellbent to catch the gunman. Bernie, too, wants in on the investigation, despite regulations strictly forbidding eyewitness involvement. Her superior may have ordered her to take some leave, but that doesn't mean she's going to sit idly by, especially when her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, is put in charge of finding the shooter.
          Pooling their skills, Bernie and Chee discover that a cold case involving his former boss and partner, retired Inspector Joe Leaphorn, may hold the key to the shooting. Digging into the old investigation with fresh eyes and a new urgency, husband and wife find themselves inching closer to the truth with every clue . . . and closer to a killer who will do anything to prevent justice from taking its course.

17. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

The Sixth World #1
listened on Audible (8:58)
read by Tanis Parenteau
2018 Saga Press
287 pgs.
Adult Fantasy/dystopia
Finished 2/11/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.12 - 5367 ratings
My rating:  3
Setting: Navajo reservation in the near future
A great review is in The Quiet Pond blog.

First line/s:  "The monster has been here.  I can smell him."

My comments:  I have mixed feelings about this book because I didn't totally understand it.  I could follow a lot of the mythological Navajo/Dineh superstitions of monsters and witchcraft and clan magic, but not enough of it to fully understand what was going on all the time.  I used my imagination as much as I could, but there are still a lot of gaps/holes in my understanding of the plot.  I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'll read any more.  I listened to the to this on audio, and it was really well read.

Goodreads synopsis:  While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.
          Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last—and best—hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.
          Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.
          As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past—if she wants to survive.
          Welcome to the Sixth World.

PICTURE BOOK - I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

2016, Second Story Press, Canada

HC  $18.95

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.29 - 385 ratings

My rating:  4.5

Endpapers:  pale sage green

1^st line/s:"The dark figure, backlit by the sun, filled the doorway of our home on Nipissing Reserve Number 10."

My comments:  I'm not sure if you would consider this a very short fiction book for middle-graders, or a quite long picture book for middle graders, but no matter which you choose it's a powerful story of how the Indigenous people - in this instance Canadian - were treated for most of the 2oth century.  Rubbish!  Ripped from their families, sent away to be practically starved and "taught" by nuns and religious factions, these children were neglected and abused and shamed.  It's sickening, and I'm glad that some of this history is hitting the bookshelves for older kids. This story is true, based on the life of the author's grandmother.

Goodreads:  When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from, despite the efforts of the nuns who are in charge at the school and who tell her that she is not to use her own name but instead use the number they have assigned to her. When she goes home for summer holidays, Irene's parents decide never to send her and her brothers away again. But where will they hide? And what will happen when her parents disobey the law? Based on the life of co-author Jenny Kay Dupuis’ grandmother, I Am Not a Number is a hugely necessary book that brings a terrible part of Canada’s history to light in a way that children can learn from and relate to.

MOVIE - Hostiles

R (2:15)

Wide release 1/26/18

Viewed 1/25/18

RT Critic: 71   Audience:  73
Critic's Consensus:  Hostiles benefits from stunning visuals and a solid central performance from Christian Bale, both of which help elevate its uneven story.

Cag:  5.5  One helluva movie

Directed by Scott Cooper

Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures

Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike

My comments:  I'm pretty sure this is one of those movies that you don't forget.  A tragic story, but one that mesmerized me.  Super performances, Christian Bale just can't be beat.  He lives and breathes his part.  Indigenous people versus those who took them over.  This movie is  about relationships between people, friendships past and present, the ties that bind and those that are fleeting or even meaningless.  I think this was a brilliant movie, a huge piece of US history, and a story that will stay with me for a long, long time.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Set in 1892, Hostiles tells the story of a legendary Army Captain (Christian Bale), who after stern resistance, reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family back to tribal lands. Making the harrowing and perilous journey from Fort Berringer, an isolated Army outpost in New Mexico, to the grasslands of Montana, the former rivals encounter a young widow (Rosamund Pike), whose family was murdered on the plains. Together, they must join forces to overcome the punishing landscape, hostile Comanche and vicious outliers that they encounter along the way.

MOVIE - Wind River

R (1:51)

Limited release 8/4/17

Viewed 9/2/17
IMBd:  7.8

RT Critic:  87  Audience:  91
Critic's Consensus:  Wind Riverlures viewers into a character-driven mystery with smart writing, a strong cast, and a skillfully rendered setting that delivers the bitter chill promised by its title.

Cag:  6/Awesome

Directed by Taylor Sheridan

Acacia Filmed Entertainment

Written by the director

Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen

My comments:  This was definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a while.  Captivating story - horrific as it was.  It included some of the best acting I've seen in a long while, complex characters.  A frigid cold winter, with scenery shots just right so that they accentuated the plot.  The devastation of the Wind River Reservation and the lives of the people trying to eak out an existence there was the centerpiece for this devastating story.  And then there was Jeremy Renner.  He was incredible, backed superbly by a cast of Native American actors that I've seen often enough to recognize, including Graham Greene.  The story will be hard to forget, and so will Jeremy Renner's performance.

RT Summary:   WIND RIVER is a chilling thriller that follows a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who teams up with a local game tracker with deep community ties and a haunted past (Jeremy Renner) to investigate the murder of a local girl on a remote Native American Reservation in the hopes of solving her mysterious death. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, WIND RIVER also stars Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, Julia Jones, Kelsey Asbille, and James Jordan.
IMDb Summary:  A veteran tracker with the Fish and Wildlife Service helps to investigate the murder of a young Native American woman, and uses the case as a means of seeking redemption for an earlier act of irresponsibility which ended in tragedy.

28. Boundary Waters - William Kent Krueger

Cork O'Connor #2

Listened on my iPhone through Audible

Audio read by David Chandler

(10:52)

book - 1999, audio - 2010

416 pgs.

Adult murder mystery

Finished 4/24/2014

Goodreads rating: 4.06

My rating:   4.5

Setting: contemporary Minnesota; late fall

My comments:  4.5 Interesting personalities and a semi-complicated plot with a bit of a surprise here and there made this book a great read (or listen-to).  I greatly enjoy the protagonist and I loved the way that the reader got to look at what was going on in three different places throughout the story. So.....excellent plot, characterization, and setting!

Goodreads book summary:  The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh -- a country-western singer at the height of her fame -- has disappeared. Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O'Connor to find his daughter, and Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on her trail as well -- men hired not just to find her, but to kill her.
A           s the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death -- violent and sudden -- stalks them.

26. Merciless - Lori Armstrong

2013, A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster

329 pgs PLUS discussion questions

Goodreads rating: 4.17

My rating: 4/Liked it a lot

Contemporary Murder Mystery; South Dakota

TPPL
First sentence/s:  "I blamed my unrealistic expectations of becoming an FBI special agent on The X-Files.  Granted, Mulder and Scully were fictional characters, but working in the FBI was nothing like portrayed on any TV shows.  Disappointment made e want to crawl inside the TV and kick some ass."

My reactions:  I love the complicated person that is Mercy Gunderson.  She's smart, tough, strong - physically - and loyal.  She's also got weaknesses and a few vulnerable soft spots that appear once-in-awhile.  She has an incredible urge to own, know, practice and know guns.  She was, after all, an army sniper.  She lives on a huge ranch in South Dakota on, near, around the Eagle River Reservation.  I've read the previous book in the series, but it was so long ago that I forgot all the numerous relationships.  This was one of the drawbacks of the book that took it down a star.  Everyone's related to someone, many generations worth, and it got very confusing.  There are a lot of "everyones."  If there's a fourth in the series I will, of course read it, but I'll begin by figuring out the family tree/s and posting it at the beginning of the book!   

Goodreads summary:  In the spirit of J.A. Jance, Nevada Barr, and C.J. Box comes Shamus Award-winning author Lori Armstrong’s sharp and gritty Merciless, about Black Ops army sniper-turned-FBI agent Mercy Gunderson and her quest for vengeance when a killer narrows his sights on her and her family.Mercy Gunderson is thrown into her first FBI murder case, working with the tribal police on the Eagle River Reservation, where the victim is the teenaged niece of the recently elected tribal president. When another gruesome killing occurs during the early stages of the investigation, Mercy and fellow FBI agent Shay Turnbull are at odds about whether the crimes are connected.

              Mercy can’t discuss her reservations about the baffling cases with her live-in boyfriend, Eagle River County Sheriff Mason Dawson, due to job confidentiality, and the couple’s home on the ranch descends into chaos when Dawson’s eleven-year-old-son Lex is sent to live with them. While hidden political agendas and old family vendettas turn ugly, masking motives and causing a rift among the tribal police, the tribal council, and the FBI, Mercy realizes that the deranged killer is still at large—and is playing a dangerous game with his sights set on Mercy as his next victim.

     Torn between her duty to the FBI and her duties to those she loves, Mercy must unleash the cold, dark, merciless killer inside her and become the predator, rather than the prey.

2. Iron Lake - William Kent Krueger

#1 Cork O'Connor
1998, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster
438 pgs.
Murder Mystery for adults
Finished Jan. 10, 2012
Goodreads Rating: 3.94
My Rating:  Awesome, couldn't wait to read/5
Acquired TPPL paperback
Setting: contemporary northern Minnesota in winter
1st sentence/s:  "Cork O'Connor first heard the story of the Windigo in the fall of 1965 when he hunted the big bear with Sam Winter Moon.  He was fourteen and his father was dead a year."

My comments: This book, the first in a new series for me, kept my interest and beckoned me to read even when I shouldn't have taken the time. Cork O'Connor, the protagonist, is smart and real, with small flaws and misgivings. Krueger did kill off a lot of his characters, though, but I can't think of any holes in the plot to speak of and the mystery was quite plausible. The setting, rural Minnesota that includes an Indian reservation in the blizzards of winter (it's winter right now, as I write this, and my feet are freezing, so I can totally relate) worked really well. It's exciting to find a new series that has a setting and protagonist that immediately pulled me in. I'm going out on a limb giving it a five, it's probably closer to 4.5, but I'm not going to quibble.

Goodreads Review:
Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his "former" status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago's South Side, there's not much that can shock him. But when the town's judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.

As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home