Part of Cork O'Connor
First published 2017
Cork O'Connor and his new wife Rainy Bisonette are watching Fourth of July fireworks in Aurora, Minnesota when they receive a shocking voicemail. Rainy's son Peter has left a garbled, static-filled message confessing to murdering someone named Rodriguez. His phone goes dead when they try to call back. The next morning they fly to southern Arizona, where Peter supposedly works at a drug rehabilitation center. They discover he was fired six months ago and vanished. Their search leads them to Sulfur Springs, a small desert town where Peter receives mail but no one claims to know him. The name Rodriguez, however, triggers recognition. Carlos Rodriguez runs the cartel controlling illegal border crossings in Coronado County. Cork struggles with Arizona's brutal heat and waterless landscape, so different from his familiar Minnesota forests. Locals repeatedly warn them about an ongoing border war and tell them to trust no one. Cork grows increasingly suspicious that Rainy knows more about Peter's situation than she admits. In this hostile environment where allies and enemies blur together, Cork must confront a terrible question: if he cannot trust his own wife, who can he trust?
Genres: american-fiction, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, suspenseful, tense
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, marital-distrust, missing-person-mystery, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Aurora, Minnesota, Southern Arizona, Sulfur Springs, Coronado County, Minnesota
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
306 pages · Hardcover · Atria Books
Content warnings: drug-use, murder, violence