Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on August 20, 2024

Spirit Crossing is the latest entry in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series. Cork is a former county sheriff. Now he lends an unofficial hand to friends who work for local police agencies, including tribal officer Daniel English. In Spirit Crossing, Cork shares the spotlight with English and several other characters, including Waaboo, who Daniel's wife found under a rock.

Waaboo sees dead people. We know from earlier novels that some Native characters have visions and can chat with spirits. Waaboo sees a young woman standing in a blueberry patch where her body is buried. It could be the body of Olivia Hamilton or Crystal Two Knives, two women who have recently gone missing. State authorities have been steering the tribal police away from Olivia’s case because her parents have influence and higher authorities need to coddle them.

After Daniel digs up the body, he realizes the victim was a Native. Since Olivia is white, outside law enforcement agencies quickly lose interest. Daniel doesn’t know whether the body is Crystal’s, but he hopes that investigating Crystal’s disappearance might shed light on Olivia’s fate.

Cork and Daniel (sometimes with Waaboo’s help over his protective mother’s objections) join with local cops to solve the mystery. The characters often discuss the reality that a missing white girl leads to obsessive reporting while the media ignore missing Native girls. Krueger tried to make a good point, but he couldn't resist the urge to add human trafficking to the story. Little originality is on display in Spirit Crossing.

Mild action scenes (meaning that characters actually move around) arrive at expected intervals, but this isn’t a pulse-pounding thriller. A bad guy occasionally takes a shot at groups of good guys but never manages to hit one, despite using a deer rifle. It’s hard to believe that Minnesota deer hunters would be such poor shots.

Series fans might appreciate the wrinkle thrown into the characters’ lives when they learn that Cork’s daughter Annie has an inoperable brain tumor. Only Maria, Annie’s lover from Guatemala, knows about Annie’s health condition. If this sounds to you like Telemundo content, I had that same thought.

The characters have folksy, familial, serious conversations about each other’s lives. The accumulated dialog seems like little more than a modernized version of soap opera gossip. Redundant discussions about health and family issues slow the pace of a novel that it is no hurry to reach a destination.

Several asides in the narrative address the fear and anger that accompany an anticipated death, culminating in Henry Meloux’s advice about returning to the Creator with an open heart. Henry, the wise old Native who offers spiritual guidance to anyone who listens, is a stereotype. Unfortunately, redundant conversations about “crossing over” and “walking the path of souls” contribute to the story’s languid pace.

At times, Spirit Crossing reads like Christian lit with Native American religions substituting for Christianity. The characters spend a good bit of time discussing “the Great Mystery” and God and their anger at God and their strained belief in a deity’s existence. Waaboo seems to be plugged into the spirit world and is positioned to reassure everyone that there really is an afterlife, an assurance that comforts the characters and might do the same for some readers.

The characters also spend a good amount of time preaching the value of forgiveness and of understanding the forces that shape people who perform evil acts. I am in favor of forgiveness and understanding but the characters’ repeated discussions of spiritual values impede a story that already proceeds at a slow pace.

The plot is straightforward but less than scintillating. The notion that a bad guy would want to kill Waaboo to stop him from gathering more evidence from dead people seems farfetched to me, but these criminals aren’t the brightest villains. The crime solvers interview people to gather information, but they rely more on Waaboo’s connection with the spirit world than on deduction. This isn’t the kind of mystery that will impress Sherlock Holmes fans, but it might engage series fans.

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