Customer Reviews

Starvation Lake: A Mystery

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is a terrific mystery. It's hard to believe that with all the mystery writers out there, someone could come up with twists that would make a book stand out. This one does. I was stunned at how much I enjoyed this book.

Besides the story being great, this guy can clearly write. There is a lot of depth and color to the characters; I laughed at several of the dialogues.

My highest reccomendation to mystery fans.

Skimming, a dangerous sport you only participate in when you're drunk. The object, speed across a wet spot in a frozen lake. You gotta be going very fast and that spot's gotta not be two soft or else you're toast. Frozen toast, because the ice breaks and you go under.

One night Coach Blackburn, the man who'd taken the local hockey team almost to the top and would have had not goalie Gus Carpenter blown it, supposedly blew it himself, skimming on Lake Starvation. He never came back and everybody assumed he'd gone under the ice.

Gus, who left town after his poor performance in that hockey game, went onto Detroit, got a job with a major newspaper, got a big story, had visions of a Pulitzer, but the powers that be wanted him to give up his source to prove his story. Ever the good reporter, Gus did not and now hes back in hometown Starvation Lake.

And then an interesting thing happens, Coach Blackburn's snowmobile surfaces in Walleye Lake. Whoops wrong Lake. How'd that happen. And it's got a bullet hole in it. Looks a bit like murder now and now Gus has a story he can sink his teeth into. But he doesn't know the half of it, because there is so much more that went on and is going on in this small town than murder. Shameful things that have bred shameful secrets.

This is a tightly written mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat as Gus investigates the coaches mysterious demise and what he finds out will shock the good citizens of this town, will shock you as well. These characters are well written human beings, some with flaws, some move evil that you could ever imagine, some perverted, some pretty good. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

While there is a strong enough narrative thrust to keep you reading to the end, the book is disappointing and I can't recommend it. The underlying story is unoriginal and the nefarious activity easily surmised long before the author choses to reveal it; characters hold back information when they would likely speak; a few story lines, notably the hero's backstory in Detroit, are woefully unresolved; and the whole conceit of the story seems overblown and garish. Again, the writer generates a good momentum at times (thought the plot feels artificially elongated) and manages to make the championship hockey game a real thrill to read, even for this non-sports fan. Life (or at least summertime) is too short for all but the best summer thrillers so Starvation Lake's not worth the dip.

Too much hockey, not enough suspense, too predictible. I tried to like this book but finally had to admit after 100-and-some pages that I wasn't enjoying it and I really didn't care about any of the characters. This was essentially a book about hockey with wisps of a mystery thrown in. Neither the hockey nor the mystery was strong enough to hold my interest. I think the author tried hard in this, his first novel. But, in my mind, he just didn't pull it off. He's an able writer but he's got to give us more than this tepid effort in future books.

I really wanted to like Starvation Lake. The reviews are so strong, but I am afraid I have to respectfully disagree with them. Starvation Lake is a murder mystery narrated by Gus Carpenter, a thirty-something reporter stuck back at his hometown paper after refusing to reveal a source that provided him with questionable information. Back in his home town of Starvation Lake, he falls back into flirting with his old (and now married) girlfriend and playing hockey with his high school friends. Their world is shaken when evidence of murder surfaces in connection with what had been believed to be the accidental death, ten years earlier, of Gus' old hockey coach. The reporter in Gus sniffs out the mystery and digs into past history--his and those of his friends and family.

The reason I found this novel to be mediocre is that there is nothing that differentiates it from any other mystery. There is no humor, no charming local color, just hockey. The characters are not very well-developed and the narrator is not really likeable--not that he is unlikeable, just sort of bland. The writing is excellent; I would expect no less from a Wall Street Journal bureau chief. I am sure true fans of mystery novels (or hockey) will enjoy this novel. The casual mystery fan should perhaps look elsewhere.

A review on the cover of "Starvation Lake" says the novel is a good debut for author Bryan Gruley. The sentence implies as much as it states, and readers should infer that Mr. Gruley has room for growth. "Starvation Lake" moves quickly and keeps you interested. While the reader never develops a deep connection to the characters, the hockey, newsroom discussions and small town intrigue manage to keep you entertained.

To keep the "mystery" going, however, Mr. Gruley relies a bit too heavily on a recurring device where characters in the know divulge a few words to our hero and then clam up. It happens a few too many times. And the way the hero unravels the mystery defies credulity. The "bad guys" either wanted to get caught or have to be galactically stupid.

On the upside, I think the story sheds a fair and accurate light on how people in the real world deal with hidden pasts and personal trauma, and how winning at any costs and making ends meet in a dying town can take a serious human toll.

Gruley is a talented writer who's easy to follow. I look forward to future books from and seeing him grow as a novelist.

Gruley sets his mystery in a small tourist town at the top of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. His characters are rugged - they work hard, care about their community, and love to cheer on the local hockey team. They're also flawed - some of them drink far too much, some value a buck over the welfare of the town, and some of them harbor vile secrets.

Enter Gus Carpenter. He's a down-on-his-luck newspaperman who was ousted from a big paper in Detroit and finds himself back home, editing the local rag and wondering about the journalistic value of bake sales and school board meetings. He can't live down the fact that his goal tending cost Starvation Lake the chance to take the state championship way back when, something he relives every time he takes to the ice in local games. When a snowmobile belonging to the town's idolized coach who died a decade ago is pulled from the frozen lake, theories about how Coach Blackburn really died begin to swirl through the town, and Gus is pushed right into the middle of digging for answers.

Small towns. Secrets. Hockey. A town once on its way up that is now sinking to the bottom. A murder mystery that might be something even bigger. Gruley brings all these elements together into a solid, well-paced mystery. The characters are compelling, and the story clips along at an even pace - nothing spectacular but nothing too slow either. This is a great book to curl up with when the snow is falling outside. Gus is the tried and true flawed hero, and I look forward to reading the next in what has to be a successful series from Bryan Gruley.