Why Minnesota is the perfect setting for crime novels ‹ CrimeReads

Minnesota is having a big moment. Since Vice President Harris named Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Americans from coast to coast have been turning their attention to the North Star State, from looking at Minnesota's free breakfast and lunch program as a model for nationwide change to analyzing the Minnesota-specific connotations of the word “weird.”

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It's nothing new, though, that Minnesota has long held a place in people's imaginations when it comes to crime novels and movies. So many of its distinctive elements and idiosyncrasies make the state the perfect setting for scary stories. The impenetrably dark forests; the thousands of lakes that, when frozen over, make a particularly gruesome setting for murders; and, of course, the delicious contrasts and contradictions. Hot dishes and heated tempers. The shocking red of blood against the flat white snow. Menacing words with a cheerful accent (sometimes well done, sometimes not).

The fact that we tend to think of vice as something unusual in Minnesota, even though crime is as prevalent there as anywhere else, is precisely what makes it so perfect. To-Brand in fiction.

The early white settlers of the Twin Cities consciously cultivated the puritanical image of their new home, as I discovered while researching my new novel. The Mesmeristset in a home for unwed mothers in Minneapolis in 1894. Much of the wealth and power in early Minneapolis was in the hands of immigrants from New England who brought with them a particular Yankee brand of NIMBYism that the city's politicians, historians, and journalists clung to for years to come.

For example: Minneapolis chronicle In 1867, he published a pearl-strewn article reporting that a “notorious prostitute” from St. Paul was planning to open what was supposedly the first-ever brothel in Minneapolis. In fact, a simple check of records proves that the sex trade along the Mississippi River had been booming since the city's earliest days, back when it was still called St. Anthony. I suspect the reporter was well aware of this, especially since a rowdy mob had violently shut down a brothel in Minneapolis a full ten years before his article was published.

Yet Minnesota's great crime writers – and there are many – have always resisted what historian Penny Petersen calls “Minneapolis's sanitized version of its past.” I would argue that this is the real reason why thrillers and crime novels set in Minnesota are so exceptional. Despite the state's reputation for denial, its writers and activists, often led by Indigenous voices, have insisted on a very public reckoning with the state's history.

Just consider what has happened there in recent years: The state flag was changed to remove the colonialist depiction of an Indigenous man and a settler. The new state seal includes for the first time the Dakota phrase “Mni Sota Makoce,” the origin of the state name. Indigenous place names have been restored, such as Bde Maka Ska, the site of the murder that was the inspiration for the killing. The Mesmerist. In 1894 it was called Lake Calhoun, but today it bears its Dakota name again thanks to the tireless efforts of indigenous activists. And at the corner of 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis, George Floyd Square still stands; activists have blocked off the streets there since 2020, creating a living, breathing memorial.

Minnesota's great writers, including Louise Erdrich, Marcie Rendon and William Kent Krueger, manage to convey a deep love of the state's natural beauty and its people while exposing the dark side of its history, from the struggles returning veterans face upon their return to the lingering effects of centuries of racism and colonial rule, they embody the most poignant of the state's sharp contrasts.

Here is just a selection of the great crime novels set in Minnesota, some classics, some new:

William Kent Krueger, The river we remember

This standalone novel from the author of the Cork O'Connor novels begins with the murder of one of Jewel, Minnesota's most prominent landowners in 1958. Rumors begin to circulate that the killer is an indigenous World War II veteran who has just moved to town with his Japanese wife. Sheriff Brody Dern, also a decorated veteran, must navigate the complexities of a town scarred by war and divided by prejudice as he solves the case.

Marcie Rendon, Where you last saw her

Popular Minnesota crime writer Rendon's latest novel focuses on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Growing awareness has inspired the hashtag #MMIWG. But Rendon is quick to remind readers that the phenomenon is nothing new. Indigenous women have been disappearing since the founding of this country. Where you last saw herThe investigators are three Ojibwe women, amateur detectives, who are training together as runners when they hear a scream along the way and decide to get to the bottom of it. Their camaraderie and warmth permeate the pages of an otherwise dark thriller.

Louise Erdrich, The sentence

The sentence is more of a ghost story than a crime novel—The round house springs to mind as one of Erdrich's best crime novels, despite being set in North Dakota—but the novel fits this list because it deeply examines Minnesota's recent history, from the aftermath of George Floyd's murder to the racial and class divides laid bare by the Covid-19 pandemic. It's also a love story of bookstores, the healing properties of books, and the power a group of women can gain when they hold the keys to the written word.

Tim O’Brien, In the lake of the forest

O'Brien's non-linear masterpiece follows John Wade, who has just lost his race for a seat in the U.S. Senate after the public discovered his role in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Wade retreats to Lake of the Woods, a massive lake on the Minnesota-Canada border; shortly thereafter, his wife disappears. But this isn't your typical crime novel, and don't expect it to be resolved in a typical way; his unique approach to the typical crime novel structure is part of what makes it so great.

Allen Eskens, The life we ​​bury

The life we ​​bury begins when Joe Talbert, a third-year student at the University of Minnesota, is assigned to interview a dying man in a nursing home: Carl Iverson, who served 30 years in prison for the murder of a 14-year-old girl and has just been released on medical parole. As Joe digs into Carl's past, he discovers that the man was a Vietnam War hero (a theme on this list!), and when he can't reconcile that past with the crime this man allegedly committed, he sets out to find the truth.

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