Starvation Lake: A Mystery [Paperback]

Bryan Gruley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Gruley's outstanding debut effortlessly incorporates his inside knowledge of both the newspaper business and his hockey avocation into a tale of violence and betrayal that will remind many of Dennis Lehane. After crossing an ethical line while writing an investigative series for the Detroit Times, reporter Gus Carpenter has returned to his hometown of Starvation Lake, Mich., to work for the local paper, whose stories mostly reflect the pedestrian and placid nature of smalltown life. That changes when evidence surfaces that the town's legendary hockey coach, Jack Blackburn, who disappeared after an apparent snowmobile accident a decade earlier, was actually murdered. Carpenter's reopening of the case, which has personal resonance for him (he'd been the goalie for the amateur boys' team Blackburn coached), shakes all sorts of skeletons loose. Gruley, the Wall Street Journal's Chicago bureau chief, has a gift for making all his characters, from the leads to the bit players, realistic. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gus Carpenter’s big-city journalistic career has gone down in flames, and he returns to Starvation Lake, a faded resort town at the northern end of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. There, he faces another ignominy: everyone in town remembers that he is the goalie who gave up the winning goal in the state ice-hockey championship more than a decade before, and many relate the town’s economic slide to that loss. Soon after his return, evidence that might explain the mysterious snowmobiling death of Gus’ coach is found, and as de facto editor of the local paper, Gus must pursue the truth—but the cost of redemption is high, for everyone. Starvation Lake is a wonderfully polished and assured first novel. Gruley’s portrayal of a struggling small town in a harsh environment rings with authenticity. His characters are believable small-town archetypes; some are self-aware, some are in denial, others are oblivious. The plot is convoluted, but Gruley maintains the suspense very effectively. Ice-hockey scenes not only advance the plot but also offer insights into the sport’s culture and its importance to small, very cold towns. 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. --Thomas Gaughan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 370 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416563628
• ISBN-13: 978-1416563624
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bryan Gruley is the author of two novels, the award-winning STARVATION LAKE and prize-nominated THE HANGING TREE, as well as the forthcoming THE SKELETON BOX. He is a reporter at large for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek. The former Chicago bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal shared in the Pulitzer Prize given to the Wall Street Journal in 2002 for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. A graduate of Notre Dame, Gruley was raised in Michigan and spent the beginnings of his journalism career working at newspapers in Kalamazoo and Detroit. An avid hockey player and amateur musician, he currently lives with his family in Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cleverly plotted rural mystery....., February 13, 2009

By 

T. Dewhirst "Avid Reader" (Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Starvation Lake: A Mystery (Paperback)

This book was a seriously enjoyable read. Cleverly plotted and told in stunning hockey flashback with well rounded and entertaining characters, Gruley sets the stage for what I hope is a very long series.

Gus is a small town journalist back from the big city. His hockey coach died in a skimming (riding snowmobiles over not quite frozen lake) accident ten years before on one lake and his snowmobile turns up on a different lake with a bullet hole in the hood. Is it the lake tunnels? Was coach's death not an accident? Gus sets out to find out and uncovers far more in a little town where everyone knows something and few people are saying anything.

I found the tone of this first novel from an award winning journalist to be very relaxed - I hate to compare to other authors but almost Crais-like in the narrative. The small town is alive - anyone could picture it - and the characters are well drawn and fleshed out so if this series does continue as seems to be the plan from an interview with Gruley, we're off to a good start. The plotlines are unpredictable but logical and I found, while reading, myself pulled into this book further and further to the point where it was just really hard not to wonder while doing other things what would happen next. The ending was clever and just wonderfully laid out.

If you buy one book from a new author this year, this one is well worth the cost of admission.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Starvation Lake: Unique And Well Worth A Visit., March 11, 2009

By 

Bradford Schmidt (BradfordSchmidt dot com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Starvation Lake: A Mystery (Paperback)

(What's this?)

I've always enjoyed mysteries. The problem is that there seem to be more cliches per page in the genre than in almost any other. Not so with journalist Bryan Gruley's first novel though, which is why I really enjoyed Starvation Like.

Gus Carpenter is a newspaper reporter who's lost his job at the Detroit Times and returned to the small, seen-better-days summer resort town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan he grew up in to take a job as editor at the small local paper. Years earlier, Starvation Lake's beloved hockey coach died when his snowmobile accidentally fell through the lake ice, but when pieces of that snowmobile wash up one day, in the dead of winter, on the shore of a different lake, Gus begins investigating what may have actually been a murder.

Now, I'll admit we've certainly seen this sort of a setup before, but really, what hasn't been done in some form or another already? It's how a book moves on from its initial plot line that counts, and it's there that Starvation Lake parts ways with other books in the genre. Starvation Lake reads like a well told story rather than a traditional mystery. Sure, there are twists, turns, unknowns, and most of the other things you'd expect to find in a mystery, but they never feel far-fetched or cliched; each event evolves naturally, logically, and believably. The town and its surrounding areas are wonderfully written, and it's easy to jump right in and feel that you're there with everyone else. Characters have the complexity and flaws necessary to feel authentic; there are no superheros here. Bottom line is that Starvation Lake just feels REAL. And Gruley thankfully avoids (for the most part) using cliff-hangers to keep readers turning pages. I rarely burned through pages just to find out what happened and was content to let the story unfold at its own pace. That, to me, is the mark of a very fine read.

My only complaint with Starvation Lake is that parts of the end felt rushed to me. After soaking up over 350 pages of well-paced prose, to see some of the plot lines wrapped up in about a page and a half seemed out of place. For example, one major sub-plot that runs throughout the book is dispatched with a single-sentence deus ex machina. Not great, and Gruley sold himself short there.

But that's certainly no deal breaker, and you shouldn't let it keep you from reading Starvation Lake. Go back and read the second and third paragraphs of my review, because that's the stuff that has stuck with me. Starvation Lake is head and shoulders above most of its contemporaries and a great read. If you're looking for a really well written and thoughtful mystery, I can recommend it highly.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joseph's brothers came to the Pharoah's land for food to keep thier people from starvation. The Bible, April 19, 2010

By 

michael a. draper (Guilford, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Starvation Lake: A Mystery (Paperback)

Gus Carpenter returns to Starvation Lake after working as a reporter for a Detroit newspaper and getting into trouble by withholding the source of one of his stories.

Now, Gus runs "The Pilot," a local paper. A snowmobile has washed up Walleye Lake. When Gus arrives at the scene, Sheriff Dengus Aho refuses to give him any information. Later, the snowmobile is shown to be missing hockey coach Jack Blackburn's, who has been missing since 1988.

Gus has his reporter, Joanie McCarthy, investigate the story. While he is visited by former hockey teammate, and current Real Estate developer, Teddy Boynton. He wants to build a marina and luxury hotel on the lake and asks Gus to support his venture in his paper.

The story flashes back to 1970 when Blackburn arrived in Starvation Lake. He had coached in Canada and began coaching a team of younger players including, Gus, his friend "Soupy" Campbell and Boynton. Eventually, the team became good enough to play for the state title. The coach became a pitchman for a real estate developer and as the team became better, interest and development in the town followed.

However, when the team fell one victory short of the title, interest in the team and Starvation Lake dwindled.

With the discovery of the snowmobile, secrets that had been hidden for years, gradually come out. What was the coach and his assistant, Leo Redpath, hiding? Somehow, a number of young men who played for the coach seemed to change and become withdrawn, but no one could put it together until Gus and his reporter, began digging.

This is a splendid debut novel with excellent characterization and description. The author has a background in hockey and in reporting and he uses this to give a realistic story with good visual images. Gus and his friend Soupy are well described characters who are easy to sympathise with.