William Kent Krueger (born November 16, 1950) is an American novelist and crime writer, best known for his series of novels featuring Cork O’Connor, which are set mainly in Minnesota.

I’ve read them all. Excellent.

In addition, he’s written several books of historical fiction. More ambitious and literary than the Cork O’Connor series.

His 2023 book — The River we Remember — is very good. A bit slow for my liking.

Memorial Day (or Decoration Day, as it was still called in 1958) takes on new meaning for the residents of Jewel, Minnesota, when its wealthiest—and least-liked—citizen is murdered and a war veteran is suspected of the crime.

The brutish victim, Jimmy Quinn, is found floating in the Alabaster River, shotgunned and chewed up by catfish.

Suspicion immediately falls on Noah Bluestone, a veteran who is doubly persecuted for being a Dakota Sioux and married to Kyoko, a Japanese survivor of Nagasaki.

The sheriff, Brody Dern, a highly decorated and traumatized war veteran who spent time in a Japanese prison camp, thinks about letting whomever killed Quinn, destroyer of people’s lives, go free. …
Kirkus Reviews