Book Review: 'Manitou Canyon'

Cork O'Connor is a half-Irish, half-Anishinaabe Minnesotan private investigator with a history of getting in too deep. Since 1998, his sleuthing exploits have been the subject of 15 books by author William Kent Krueger, and have seen him traveling across Minnesota and north Ontario to destroy a human trafficking ring, take down corrupt business moguls, solve inexplicable murders, and rebuild a marriage with a wife whose death he'd later find himself investigating. If you haven't checked out Krueger's work, do yourself a favour and head down to your local bookstore.

If, in fact, you are familiar with his books, you'll know that with some exceptions (including his breathtaking foray out of the O'Connor mysteries, Ordinary Grace), Krueger's books have steadily declined in length and frankly quality over the years. Early O'Connor books such as Iron Lake, Boundary Waters, Mercy Falls, and Purgatory Ridge were stellar, weaving intricate and captivating overarching mysteries around insightful and emotional plot lines for individual characters. Cork O'Connors' struggle to repair his marriage, his spiritual growth guided by elder Henry Meloux, and his constant fight to be the best father he can for his three children frame a never-ending stream of unsettling crimes in fictional Tamarack County. Since 2009's Heaven's Keep, however, the books have declined in length, and both the quality of the individual plot lines and of the developments within Cork's personal life have felt increasingly thin, with less detail and what seems like less emotional involvement from the author. I'm hesitant to accuse one of my favourite authors of "phoning it in" on the series that has become his magnum opus, but after seven years one is obliged to call a spade a spade.

Manitou Canyon, disappointingly, continues this trend. This is obvious from the time you first pick it up and feel the lightness of the slender volume. Not to say that a book has to be long to be good, but in this case one starts to guess that the shorter an O'Connor book is, the less detail and development has been included. It weighs in a few thousand words under the series average, and the reader can tell. A family wedding, an engagement, a reunion, and multiple major spiritual events surround a story about a terrorist plot to bomb a dam and destroy a town, and somehow thereby save the environment around Lake of the Woods, Ontario. While these huge personal events and the grand scope of the main plot are massive, the books itself skims through them, pushing towards the finale. Maybe this was an attempt to increase reader excitement by pumping the pace, but the achieved effect is underwhelming. These major events feel like a letdown as they fly by and shrink in the readers rearview mirror.

So, sure. It's almost an exciting book. And it's always great fun to meet our beloved O'Connor family again. In fact, the highlight of this book is the growing O'Connor family: an estranged relative is welcomed back and Waboo continues to grow, becoming a more and more active character (but his toddler antics still delight). Unfortunately the treatment of the characters and subject matter leave a reader asking "so what?" as they put the book down. It's getting harder and harder to get excited to re-enter Aurora with Cork every year, but I'll obviously be headed out to the mall in a few days to buy Sulfur Springs when it hits the shelves. I'm in too deep, I can't back out now. If you're a long-time reader considering picking up Manitou Canyon, lower your expectations. If you've read this and are headed to the library to see if they have a copy of Iron Lake, enjoy! Just remember where it leads.

The cover art for Manitou Canyon is an apt metaphor for the book itself; yes, the colours are pretty, but it's still a mostly empty picture of nothing in particular.

Rating: 5.5/10

P.S. — If you're actually here, at the bottom of my third review...thank you! I can't believe you keep coming back for more, you stupid dumb idiot! You actually care what I have to say? Fool! Thank you, much love, and take care.