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by Bryan Gruley
In the dead of a Michigan winter, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the crumbling, small town of Starvation Lake -- the same snowmobile that went down with Starvation's legendary hockey coach years earlier. But everybody knows Coach Blackburn's accident happened five miles away on a different lake. As rumors buzz about mysterious underground tunnels, the evidence from the snowmobile says one thing: murder.
Gus Carpenter, editor of the local newspaper, has recently returned to Starvation after a failed attempt to make it big at the Detroit Times. In his youth, Gus was the goalie who let a state championship get away, crushing Coach's dreams and earning the town's enmity. Now he's investigating the murder of his former coach. But even more unsettling to Gus are the holes in the town's past and the gnawing suspicion that those holes may conceal some dark and disturbing secrets secrets that some of the people closest to him may have killed to keep.
"Starred Review. Gruley ... has a gift for making all his characters, from the leads to the bit players, realistic." - Publishers Weekly.
"Gruley's debut is generously plotted and rewardingly solid on character and atmosphere, though most readers will be ahead of Gus every step of the way." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Many good crime novels appear every month, but few have the depth and poignancy of Starvation Lake, which deserves comparison with Dennis Lehane's Mystic River." - Booklist.
"A great debut from a major talent." - Harlan Coben.
"Bryan Gruley's Starvation Lake introduces a welcome, human voice to crime fiction readers." - George Pelecanos.
"Starred Review. Full of insider knowledge about hockey and great local color, this is not to be missed. Highly recommended for all collections." - Library Journal.
This information about Starvation Lake was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gruley is the Wall Street Journal 's Chicago bureau chief.
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