A big fan of Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series, it took a while before I tried his masterwork, the 2014 Edgar Award winner for best novel.

It’s fantastic.

Other candidates that year included Ian Rankin and Louise Penny.

Krueger was raised in small town Minnesota. The same age as the 13-year-old narrator of this book.

My main takeaway — at the end — is that two of the characters I’d include in my list of best all time. Frank’s father, Nathan, a Methodist minister. And Frank’s younger brother, who eventually also becomes a minister.

If you asked me to name great Christians in fiction, I’d include those two.

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New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack.

It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family— which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother— he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years. …

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