Lt. Jonathan Stride, the complicated main character in Minnesota author Brian Freeman's crime series set around Duluth, is in a very dark place. He's reeling from the terrible events of his last case, when he was severely injured from a high fall, suffering broken bones, a collapsed lung and panic attacks Although Stride has had months to heal, he's still suffering.
But crimes must be solved and evil abated, none of which the usually stable Stride has the desire to do. But he does, coming back from disability before he's ready to help solve a string of murders. I've come to expect a deft balancing of psychological depth and strong storytelling from Freeman's series. In "The Burying Place" (Minotaur, 340 pages, $24.99), he exceeded those expectations.
Someone is slaughtering women from remote farms near Grand Rapids, and while Maggie Bei, Stride's partner, works this case, Stride cuts his medical leave short to investigate an infant abducted from a lavish lake home in the area. The suspense driving this novel is palpable from opening pages that are as gripping as any I've read in a thriller this year: A female cop is traveling alone on a fog-drenched road in northern Minnesota when -- bam! -- a series of very bad things happens.
The suspense heightens as much from the pacing of Stride and his team racing to track the killer and find the child as from seeing Stride's psyche fracture before our eyes.
Character and setting have always been imaginatively linked in this series, too. In this book, Freeman uses the conflict among a few of his characters to home in on the cultural gaps and underlying tensions that are a reality to many who live near rural resort lakes in Minnesota.
These places have been transformed by "wealthy professionals, transplants from Minneapolis who [can] afford seven-figure lake homes" while the area's "mill workers, road crews and farmers" struggle "with spiking prices for food, gas and health care."
As I read, the realization deepened that the burying place of the title may not only be a reference to the book's hidden crimes, but also an allusion to Stride's fragile psyche and the things he can no longer bury from those he loves or even hide from himself.
Carole Barrowman teaches at Alverno College in Milwaukee and blogs at carolebarrowman.com
