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

FICTION: The latest from the Minnesota author may be his best work yet. 

Review: William Kent Krueger’s ‘The River We Remember’ takes us back to 1958 Minnesota

Good Girl, Bad Blood (2021) is the second novel in the three-part A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series of young adult crime fiction.

The first book in the series, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2020), became a multimillion-copy New York Times bestseller. …

the novel explores the themes of The Use and Abuse of Social Media, Questions of Identity, and The Pursuit of Truth and Justice. …c

SuperSummary

Not as good as the original, but I still enjoyed this Young Adult novel.

18-year-old high school student Pippa Fitz-Amobi is not nearly so good in this one.

I enjoyed the smart phone driven plot. The podcast clips.

She investigates by crowd sourcing through her true crime podcast entitled A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Click PLAY or watch the author on YouTube.

Though I didn’t read the 1st book in the series, Silver Tears is entertaining and stands alone.

Läckberg’s 2nd novel about the brilliant economist — Faye Adelheim.

A scandal-filled page-turner sure to delight the beach-read crowd.

The plot careens at breakneck speed through steamy sex scenes, startling revelations, and flashbacks to Faye’s very dark childhood riddled with rape and murder.

What the story lacks in believability (there are poorly planned murders, successful executives who spend inordinate amounts of time drinking without any repercussions, and a heroine who fails to learn from her own mistakes), it more than makes up for with soap-opera–level drama and fireworks.

It all begins with Faye having set up house in Italy with her mother and her daughter, Julienne.

Faye had framed her ex-husband, Jack, for killing Julienne, though Julienne is secretly still alive, and now Jack has escaped from jail. …

Kirkus

Koontz is an excellent story teller.

By the Light of the Moon is his 2007 novel. Suspense, mystery, and no shortage of the supernatural.

Dylan O’Conner is traveling with his 20-year-old autistic brother Shep.

An evil doctor injects them with a new drug.

Jillian Jackson, a traveling comedian, is tied up and chloroformed by the doctor before being injected with the same substance.

Dylan becomes psychometric and Shep reveals an ability to travel from one place to another, referred to as ‘folding’. Eventually, they come to share each other’s abilities.

They are on the run as the BAD GUYS don’t want the secrets of the nanotechnology to become known.

Perveen Mistry is Bombay’s first female lawyer.

A good premise for this, the 3rd book in the series.

November 1921. Edward VIII, Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, is arriving in Bombay to begin a four month tour.

The Indian subcontinent is chafing under British rule, and Bombay solicitor Perveen Mistry isn’t surprised when local unrest over the royal arrival spirals into riots. But she’s horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female Parsi student, who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince’s grand procession is passing by her college.

Freny had come for a legal consultation just days before her death, and what she confided makes Perveen suspicious that her death was not an accident. …

Amazon

Start with Widows of Malabar Hill, the 1st book in the series.

Click PLAY or watch the author on YouTube.

Some feel his 1994 novel — Praying for Sleep — was the 1st to gain Deaver wide acclaim.

It is very good.

On a savage, storm-lashed night, Michael Hrubek — a dangerously paranoid schizophrenic — escapes from a mental hospital for the criminally insane by impersonating a dead man.

He’s on a mission — to find Lis Atcheson, the woman whose testimony identified him as the gruesome Indian Leap State Park murderer. …

Racing to intercept him are his psychiatrist, Richard Kohler, a brilliant doctor — but one with his own secrets to protect; Trenton Heck, a professional dog tracker, with an uncanny skill for picking up a trail and a desperate need for the reward money offered for Hrubek’s return; and Lis’s husband, Owen Atcheson, a man of uncommon intelligence and determination — who must hunt Hrubek down before he can destroy his wife.

Yet Michael’s madness is inextricably entwined with his genius — and he proves a far greater adversary than any of his pursuers anticipated. For though his mind is tormented by his eerie delusions of betrayal and revenge, he is crystal clear on one point: he knows Lis Atcheson better than she knows herself, and as he hunts her he is bringing a terrible secret into the light of day.