O ops.

So you made a mistake. If it’s a small one, apologize and move on, you’re all good. If it’s a big one, though, you’ll have a lot more fancy footwork to do because a mere mea culpa probably won’t be enough. You may feel sorry and have deep regrets, but as in the new novel, “Apostle’s Cove” by William Kent Krueger, you’ll need to make things right.

Time flies, as they say, and Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor was feeling it.

It was nearly Halloween, and time again to close up Sam’s Place for the season. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cork was a teenage part-timer at that northern Minnesota eatery? And now he was its owner, and recently retired from the Tamarack County police force.

He was ruminating on the past and the future, when he received a call from his son, Stephen, a law school intern at an Innocence Project. He had sobering news.

Twenty-five years ago, Aphrodite McGill had called 9-1-1, screaming, begging for police to come to her daughter’s home, where they found Aphrodite in a pool of blood on the floor by Chastity’s body. She claimed that Axel Boshey, Chastity’s husband, did it; the couple had a fierce battle the night before and Axel was prone to violence. When he finally confessed to the murder of his wife, Cork had no choice but to arrest the Ojibwe man, and Axel went to prison.

But that never did set right for Cork. He wasn’t convinced that Axel had killed Chastity, even though many in Tamarack County had already convicted Axel in their minds — which is just what Axel’s kin on the “rez” figured would happen. His confession was shaky. Chastity had enemies, too, and her mother lived a hedonistic, hippie lifestyle that was a magnet for troublemakers. These facts of Chastity Boshey’s murder had stuck in the back of Cork’s mind for 25 years – and then Stephen called.

Could there have been a mistake? And could Cork set the record straight?

Have you ever been enticed by a book that looks great, only to find yourself in the middle of a series, and lost? You needn’t worry about that with “Apostle’s Cove.”

Yes, this book is the latest installment of the “Cork O’Connor” series but author William Kent Krueger does a great job ensuring that readers are comfortably up-to-speed on the settings here, including a good description of northern Minnesota and a real- but-fictional Ojibwe reservation on which the story takes place. In that, readers also get a nicely balanced lesson in culture and conflict, and a good sense of the background they’ll need to comprehend why characters act as they do — which also serves as a good reminder for long-time fans, too.

So feel free to jump into the middle of this series, with “Apostle’s Cove” as launching point. You’ll be satisfied if you’re a fan from way back, and you won’t be confused if you’re new to these books. The only lost you’ll get is lost in a good story, make no mistake.

— The Bookworm Sez