The Red Canoe

At the start of this intriguing if choppily plotted crime novel from Johnson (The Devil You Know), Michael “Buck” Fineday, who lives alone near Minnesota’s Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation, considers shooting himself after his estranged wife serves him with divorce papers, but after flipping a coin decides instead to continue building handcrafted boats and takes on 15-year-old Lucy Walter as an apprentice. Lucy, herself a loner, lives with her widowed alcoholic father in a run-down trailer on the reservation, where she has become the victim of a group of child abusers whose members consider her fair game to rape at will. When Lucy’s best friend is murdered, she fears for her own life and turns to Buck for help. Buck uses his backwoods knowledge and training as a government agent to try to thwart the villains. The organized rape club setup stretches credulity, as does the way characters sometime behave (Lucy shows up at Buck’s eager to learn boat building shortly after she’s been sexually assaulted), but readers will care enough about Buck and Lucy to want to see how they fare in the end. Those new to Johnson may be curious to check out his previous work. Agent: Madison Smartt Bell, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Mar.)