Thriller Spotlight with Joel C. Rosenberg

I love how really well-written novels and nonfiction books can transport me out of my own world, my own culture, my own time, and into one so different, so foreign, and so compelling.

My wife’s favorite novel is Exodus by Leon Uris. She reads it once every year or two. After years of being way too busy, I finally read it and absolutely loved it as well. A classic work of historical fiction, Exodus swept me away from my twenty-first-century life here in Israel back to the days after World War II, after the horrors of the Holocaust, as Jews are streaming into what was then known as the British Mandate for Palestine. Forging compelling characters and writing with vivid, colorful language, Uris transports me into a world where the nation-state of Israel is being prophetically reborn. It’s a world of terror, political intrigue, outright war—and one of the best love stories I’ve ever read. Sure, I’ve read lots of history books about the re-creation of the Jewish state, but Exodus was so much more fun and compelling than any of them because I got to feel like I was really there.

Of course, a novel doesn’t have to be a classic to still transport readers into places and cultures that they would never otherwise go. And I love to ask friends and colleagues what they’re reading and loving and why. The book I want to highlight in this month’s “Thriller Spotlight” is Fox Creek. It’s the nineteenth novel in William Kent Krueger’s New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor Mysteries, a series that debuted in 1998. While I haven’t been able to read it myself yet, a colleague of mine told me about it and highly recommended it because it transported him into culture he’d never experienced.

Cork O’Connor is the former sheriff of Tamarack County in the extreme northern part of Minnesota. Elements of his part Irish and part Ojibwe heritage blend to form a man who can be at times rash and at others introspective. Having given up law enforcement, O’Connor now runs a diner out of a Quonset hut on the Ojibwe reservation and occasionally hires himself out as a private detective.

When a man shows up at the restaurant looking for help to find his missing wife, who he claims has run off with an Ojibwe healer named Henry Meloux, O’Connor knows something is off. After all, Meloux is 105 years old. So there was no way he was shacking up with this guy’s wife. To his surprise, however, the former sheriff does, in fact, find the woman at Meloux’s house. But it’s not a case of adultery. And O’Connor learns that the wife has no idea of the identity of the man who visited the diner. Baffled, O’Connor sets off to find some answers. But not long after he leaves Meloux’s place, the house is stormed by mercenaries. Why? What in the world is happening? And what’s going to happen next? The bait was set and my colleague was hooked.

When he was finished, he told me Fox Creek is well-paced and full of suspense. Krueger, he says, knows how to develop quirky and compelling characters and take his readers into a very different world. Indeed, he says the best part of the book was the insight into the Ojibwe culture. The novel makes you feel just how harsh life on a reservation really is. The resentment that many Native Americans feel toward the U.S. government is palpable. And Krueger does a good job of shining a spotlight on the native spiritualism that seems to be woven into the very fabric of the lives of many indigenous Americans.

Not surprisingly, Fox Creek has gotten strong reviews as a highly entertaining read and an opportunity to experience life on the Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota. That’s why I’m grateful for this recommendation and others. I don’t have as much time as I’d wish to discover and explore new novels. But I always love to hear what books my teammates are reading and why they love them so much—especially those that make them feel transported to “a galaxy far, far away.”

—Joel C. Rosenberg