There are moments when fate kicks you in the nuts, and there are moments when fate allows you some joy. Today contained the latter. One day, I dropped by a used bookstore on a whim. There, I scanned the shelves for publishers and authors that I look for, expecting nothing. However, as I looked at the “K’s” for William Kent Krueger, I saw one book that I wanted. Then, to my surprise, I saw another, and another. In total, there were five out of 19 Krueger books that I lacked, and they were all there!
Each book carried a sticker price of $8.49, but as I’d found none at the two local bookstores that carried current books, where the price for Krueger’s books was $17 or more, I didn’t hesitate. Now, I finally have all of the 19 of the books in that series (a new one was published in hardcover this year, so I have to wait a while to get that one). I do feel bad that I didn’t send the author any money, but I have bought several books new vs. used. In this case, I’ve only found them used. Sorry, WKK!
I first stumbled across Krueger’s Cork O’Connor books in 2021 when I saw the title of one of the books, Boundary Waters. This story is likely a post for another time, but in 2019 I signed up for a trip to the boundary waters, which is a series of lakes and rivers in Minnesota and Canada. I was supposed to take a trip there in 2020, starting from somewhere in Canada. Well, we all know what happened in 2020, so that trip never happened.
But, with the boundary waters on my mind, I bought Krueger’s book, and from that point on I was hooked into another series. Since then, I’ve read most of his other books in that series, almost all of them out of sequence. With these five books, I now get the opportunity to “close the loop,” so to speak, and read the rest of the books. It’s going to be tough, as some great people die in these books. Heaven’s Keep, the first on my list to read, might be the hardest one. Having read ahead, I know what tragedy happens in that book, and it ain’t fun, folks, it ain’t fun.
