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    Vermilion Drift
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    Vermilion Drift
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    Vermilion Drift
    Audiobook10 hours

    Vermilion Drift

    Written by William Kent Krueger

    Narrated by Buck Schirner

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    William Kent Krueger's gripping tale of suspense begins with a recurring nightmare, a gun, and a wound in the earth so deep and horrific that it has a name: Vermilion Drift.

    When the Department of Energy puts an underground iron mine on its short list of potential sites for storage of nuclear waste, a barrage of protest erupts in Tamarack County, Minnesota, and Cork is hired as a security consultant.

    Deep in the mine during his first day on the job, Cork stumbles across a secret room that contains the remains of six murder victims. Five appear to be nearly half a century old - connected to what the media once dubbed "The Vanishings," a series of unsolved disappearances in the summer of 1964, when Cork's father was sheriff in Tamarack County. But the sixth has been dead less than a week. What's worse, two of the bodies - including the most recent victim - were killed using Cork's own gun, one handed down to him from his father.

    As Cork searches for answers, he must dig into his own past and that of his father, a well-respected man who harbored a ghastly truth. Time is running out, however. New threats surface, and unless Cork can unravel the tangled thread of clues quickly, more death is sure to come.

    Vermilion Drift is a powerful novel, filled with all the mystery and suspense for which Krueger has won so many awards. A poignant portrayal of the complexities of family life, it's also a sobering reminder that even those closest to our hearts can house the darkest - and deadliest - of secrets.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 7, 2010
    ISBN9781423396130
    Unavailable
    Vermilion Drift
    Author

    William Kent Krueger

    William Kent Krueger is the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember, This Tender Land, Ordinary Grace (winner of the Edgar Award for best novel), and the original audio novella The Levee, as well as nineteen acclaimed books in the Cork O’Connor mystery series, including Lightning Strike and Fox Creek. He lives in the Twin Cities with his family. Learn more at WilliamKentKrueger.com.

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    Reviews for Vermilion Drift

    4/5

    166 ratings21 reviews

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    • 3/5
      10 books into this series and I'm still loving every entry. A lot happened in the last book that made we question where the series was going to go from there, but this was one was just as good at the others before it. You have got to read this series in order though if you have any hope of appreciating the characters.
    • 4/5
      Yet another solid entry in the Cork O'Connor series. I really love how Krueger mixes the Native American culture with rural white culture of the upper mid-west. The mystery is always good in this series where you can kind of work out who is involved, but you never quite now how it all plays out until the end.

      A bit of a SPOILER - I didn't like how none of Cork's immediate family was in this book. Some of it is explained by what happened in the last book, but I just feel like not having any of his family in the story took a bit away from the characters I have loved in the series. With that said, I understand that even in the fictional world, time moves on for people.
    • 4/5
      *** WARNING -- SOME SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THIS SERIES ***

      Another great entry in the series. This one covers a serial killer who was active over 40 years ago when Cork was a teenager. The disappearances of his victims were known as "The Vanishings". Now Cork has discovered where the bodies are, and there is a new victim.

      This book was really different in that Cork was living alone, which hasn't been the case since 'Iron Mountain', the first book in the series. I liked the fact that he was reevaluating his life and his purpose without having his family around. As usual Cork becomes deeply involved in the investigation and the outcome was carefully plotted, if not entirely surprising. Another great book in a consistently fine series.
    • 4/5
      The Vermillion One detective story begins with a threat to the corporate owners of the Vermillion One mine in Gresham MN, and to its proprietors. The plot is engaging, but William Kent Krueger is chary in doling out the clues about what happens inside the mine, and how it connects with the Ojibwe Iron Lake reservation which abuts the mine property. The plot progresses from a threat against the Manager and the DOE agent, to a murder of a relative of the mine manager. Meanwhile, Cork O'Connor is playing a pivotal role in bringing forth the motivations and the roles played by the killers involved in the novel, but this is technically in defiance of the orders of Sheriff Dross. Cork O'Connor does not share the nuances of what has been going on with the key actors in this saga of the grim history of the Alouette and Aurora towns, and the Rez. From the shock of the initial mine protest, to the evidence-seeking part of the novel more reflective as the contractor Detective Cork O'Connor finds how close the characters participating in this tragic mystery are to his own personal history.
    • 4/5
      William Kent Krueger's fictional world of Aurora continues to provide a rich and plot-full background for this excellent series. Never a simple county cop, Cork O'Connor continues to fight personal demons and cultural biases to solve a complex series of crimes that originated during his father's tenure as a county policeman. He tells a good story enriched by solid sustaining characters leavened by intriguing newcomers. May, Henry Meloux live to be a hundred.
    • 2/5
      I did not enjoy this book as I have with the previous books in this series. I found myself skipping pages. The Native lore is interesting but for me, that's about it for this book.
    • 5/5
      William Kent Krueger is the best storyteller ever. All of his books are so engaging and full of surprises. This book has a touch of the supernatural which makes the story even more intriguing. The characters are well developed and you can feel their emotions. It was another definite page turner and the ending did not disappoint but left me wanting more. I will be reading the next in the series very soon.
    • 4/5
      This is a great series, and this particular book was especially good. I enjoyed finding out more about Cork's early life and his relationship with his father. Moving on to #11! :-)
    • 4/5
      Cork finds himself investigating a decades old cold case as he tries to solve a current murder. Mining interests and the local residents clash over the possibility of storing nuclear waste in old mine shafts.
    • 5/5
      A murder mystery set in Aurora and related to an old Iron Mine and one of its passages: the vermilion drift. Initially he is hired to look for the missing sister of the mine’s owner. He is also working for the mine trying to see who. Is behind some threatening graffiti related to a plan to store nuclear waste in the mine. Cork discovers two things as he begins his investigation: 1) there is a secret entrance to the mine coming from an abandoned shaft, and that shaft contains several bodies. Most are decades old but one is the woman who he had been hired to find. Working as a consultant to the sherif Cork finds himself drawn into the hunt for the killers and uncertainty about what role his father may have played in the cold case murders. Through hard work, knowledge of his community, intuition and finally the aid of his Mento, Henry, the shaman, he comes to understand both the contemporary murder and the much older murders.
    • 4/5
      very good novel, and interesting mystery. I will look forward to more from this author.
    • 5/5
      Think that might have been one of his best Cork stories to date!!!
    • 5/5
      This was another truly haunting mystery by WKK. Excellent read.
    • 4/5
      In Vermillion Drift, the 10th installment of the Cork O’Conner series, Cork investigates threats to mine officials who want to use the mine as a storage for nuclear waste. (A drift is a horizontal tunnel off of a vertical shaft). Cork is also asked to investigate the disappearance of the mine owner’s sister. The plot takes a turn when the bodies of five women are found in the mine. Four are from long ago, but one is recent. The investigation forces Cork to confront long suppressed memories involving his father.
    • 5/5
      William Kent Kreuger's mystery series featuring Cork O'Connor seemed, in my mind, to start out relatively slowly. I felt that it wasn't until his fourth or fifth book that he really hit his stride. I'm very thankful that I had bought up his complete series before beginning to read them (based on an enthusiastic review I read of a later book).. otherwise I might have given up on the series early on and missed some really great stories. And in hindsight even the early books have a great deal to offer. The novels are set in rural, northern Minnesota for the most part with the action shifting to The U.P. of Michigan in one story and to Wyoming in another. Mr. Kreuger gives Cork O'Connor a family life that is anything but 'storybook'. From one end to the other this is a loving, but modern family, with real life modern problems that they do manage to get resolved. Fairly early in the series, the stories begin increasingly encompassing Cork's and his family's Native American connection to good advantage!This is a very good and satisfying series which I gobbled up faster and faster towards the end. Now I have to sit and eagerly await the next Cork O'Connor adventure. This is a series where the books could be read as stand alones, but for maximum enjoyment I would strongly recommend reading them in the order that they were written.
    • 5/5
      Vermilion Drift is another excellent mystery by William Kent Kruegar. Cork O'Conner becomes involved in the mystery of finding a missing woman which leads to finding bodies of individuals who were missing years ago. The details of iron ore mining could be boring, but the author did a great job of keeping the reader interested in the details of mining. The twist and turns and the Ojibwe Indian lore and legend are just fascinating. What a great story!!
    • 4/5
      VERMILION DRIFT by William Kent Krueger is not a formulaic thriller. But it sure is a mystery/thriller.In this book, Cork O’Connor is a private investigator hired to find the person leaving threatening messages for various people involved in the use of a former mine for the storage of nuclear waste. One of those men also hires Cork to find his sister. So Cork is doing both jobs at once. But this doesn’t last long. She is found, along with the skeletal remains of five other people, in a hidden area of the mine, the Vermilion Drift.Now it is Cork’s job not only to learn who is leaving the messages but, also, to help find the person or people who murdered five people 40 years ago (as determined by a forensic anthropologist) and one person a week ago. At first, some mysteries, like whose bones have been there for 40 years, unravel quickly. But did the same person or people kill all six people, the five in 1964 and the one more recently? Do the protest and the protesters outside the mine have anything to do with the recent murder? How are the older murders and the recent murder connected? Why do four of the skeletal remains belong to Indians while one belongs to a white woman who was the mother of the sixth murder victim? Could Cork’s own gun, the gun that was his father’s when he was county sheriff 40 years ago, have been the murder weapon? Why are certain pages cut from Cork’s mother’s 40-year-old journal? These are some of the mysteries Cork must solve. This is one book in a series about Cork O’Connor, but it doesn’t seem necessary to read the series in order. Krueger explains that Cork’s wife was murdered a year ago; his children are adults now, scattered to various parts of the country; he is part Indian, and his past and present jobs have been and are involved with Indians and the local Indian reservation (the “rez”); and, like his father, he used to be county sheriff. That’s explanation enough.VERMILION DRIFT is a thriller, with stories within stories within stories and with the answer to one question leading to more questions. It’s better than most bestselling thrillers because it’s not formulaic as so many thrillers are. It is character-driven.Only one criticism: the old Indian Henry. He knows so much yet will speak only in riddles throughout the book. And Cork reveres him. He just goes along with Henry’s evasiveness and his sometimes corny Indian traditions and rituals that act like pauses in elements of the story that might have been more thrilling. Even so, readers will enjoy and appreciate this nonformulaic thriller. My criticism is debatable.
    • 4/5
      Former sheriff, Cork O'Connor is hired to find Lauren Cavanaugh by her brother, Max. Max is the owner of the Great North Mining Co. and Vermillion One is one of their deepest mines. It is being considered for a dumping site for nuclear waste. This is causing heated protests from the locals.After meeting with Max, Cork is asked to look at something spray painted on the inside wall of the mine, "We die, you die." Since no one saw the person who did the spray-painting, Cork knew that there must be another enterance to the mine.When he looks for this other enterance, he finds a secret room with six dead bodies. Five of them have been there for years but one has recently been placed there. This reminds Cork of The Vanishings.In 1964, two teenage Indian American women disappeared, then a rich white woman disappeared also. This white woman was Monique Cavanaugh, Lauren's mother.In a story deep with Indian folk lore, Cork speaks to his ancient friend, Henry Meloux. Despite advancing age, Henry can sense things. He tells Cork that there is unrest in the reservation and tells Cork who to speak to in order to identify the other two bodies found in the mind.It is interesting that Cork's father was the sheriff when The Vanishings took place. It creates a moral dilemma for Cork to consider if his father was involved with the missing women. Then, Cork makes another discovery that brings the case even closer to him.As always with William Kent Krueger, there are details about the Ojibwe Indian culture and beliefs. Cork is realistically described and the story is told as if the pieces were put together like parts of a menu that is eventually laid out for the reader to learn and be entertained by its rich detail.
    • 4/5
      This is the tenth in a series about P.I. "Cork" O'Connor. I'm surprised I haven't cone across any of the previous 9, since I like mysteries. I especially enjoyed this book because of the info on iron-ore mining in Minnesota. My grandfather worked on the Mahoning Mine on the Mesabi Range near Hibbing, Minnesota back in the day. I visited that mine and heard stories about the mining operation when I was growing up. I know all about the large number of immigrants there....mostly Scandanavian and Irish (as am I), but heard almost nothing of the Native Americans in the area. Not surprising, I suppose, for that time. It was a good story, although I figured out the killer fairly early on. I do think that the revelations at the end would have been discovered much, much earlier in Cork's life. Some disconnects for me, but overall a good story.
    • 3/5
      This is the tenth book in a series involving detective Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor of Tamarack County, Minnesota, but I have never read any of his books prior to this one. It turned out not to matter at all; this book stands alone with no problem. You learn quite a bit about iron mining in this suspense/mystery, as well as about the local Ojibwe concerns and customs, and I really liked that. I feel “guilty” enough as it is just reading a murder mystery, but when I can learn something from it, I feel better.The [fictional] Vermilion One Iron Mine near where O’Connor lives is being investigated as a potential site for nuclear waste disposal. [Indian Country has often been considered for hazardous waste sites. The poverty and political disenfranchisement of Native Americans make them more tempting targets than more politically astute and well-funded constituencies.] Protestors at the mine site seem dangerous. Several mining officials have received threatening notes. And now Lauren Cavanaugh, sister of Max, who runs the mine, is missing. Max contacts Cork, an old friend, to ask him to help find her. It turns out he does, along with five other bodies.Cork is a retired county sheriff and is now a private investigator. He’s a widower with three grown children, and is alone except for the family dog. He is also part Ojibwe. The current sheriff, Marsha Dross, asks him to work for her to help solve the murders; his contacts among the Ojibwe will help greatly. Eventually Cork is able to solve both mysteries: not only the recent murder of Lauren but the older killings as well. In the course of doing so, however, he requires help from an Ojibwe Medicine Man named Henry Meloux, who, well past ninety years old, has helped out Cork all his life.Evaluation: The suspense level isn’t particularly high in this book, but I enjoyed it for all of its other positive attributes. I liked the way Krueger was able to portray the emotional state of a man suddenly adrift in life with his wife and children gone. I found the Ojibwe customs interesting, and I really liked learning about mining in a very non-technical way as well.
    • 5/5
      Vermilion Drift is the 10th book in Wm. Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor series and the first I've read; I enjoyed it thoroughly and I highly recommend it. Here's a few reasons why - A very interesting plot, having to do with a five unsolved murders 40 years ago and a current murder, with a number of links between them. I like Cork - he is one of the few flawed, non-alcoholic investigators I've encountered in crime fiction. The setting is very interesting, the iron mining region of northern Minnesota, and there are great descriptions of mine drifts far below ground, as well as scenes in the deep and sometimes ominous forest; I felt I learned a lot about both without being preached to. There are great descriptions of place throughout the book, whether it's a neighbor's cluttered lawn or an arts center wreaking of "bad medicine". The pace of the story is quick; I was constantly changing viewpoint on the identity of the perpetrator(s). There is good description of the ethnic mix of the region, encompassing the Ojibwe and numerous European immigrant communities, and candor regarding where whites and Indians trust and respect each other today, and where they don't. The only problem I had with the book was with one of the most likeable characters, Henry, an Indian elder - but he's the all-knowing, mystical guru who can even erase memory. A bit too much for me, but I am a bit of a cynic. I've read other western crime fiction, including Hillerman, Johnson, Box, Pearson, and I prefer Krueger's book to them all.