Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, Harlan Coben meets early Dennis Lehane in this “smashing debut thriller” (
Chicago Tribune
), set in a small northern Michigan town by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.
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.
Customer Reviews
Rating Breakdown
★★★★★
30%
(141)
★★★★
25%
(117)
★★★
15%
(70)
★★
7%
(33)
★
23%
(108)
Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
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Cleverly plotted rural mystery.....
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.
44 people found this helpful
★★★★★
1.0
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Disappointing
Don't be suckered in by the positive reviews! This book is poorly written and, for the most part, predictable. You can see every plot "twist" coming from a mile away, yet the characters can't piece together the most obvious clues. And speaking of characters, there is not a single likeable or sympathetic one in the book. It reminded me of the kind of prose you see in introductory creative writing classes: lots of "inside jokes" (e.g. describing the quirks of small town life, sports rituals, etc.), a reliance on deus ex machinas, one-dimensional characters and stilted dialogue.
17 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Joseph's brothers came to the Pharoah's land for food to keep thier people from starvation. The Bible
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.
12 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
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Nice Try But.....Nah.
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.
9 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
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I was misled
If I wrote this book, it never would have been published. I guess when you are a bureau chief for a major newspaper, you have enough clout and friends to get it done.
I read Michael Connelly, CJ Box, and, most notably, Harlan Coben, so when I noticed blurbs from all the authors on the cover praising this book, I thought, "Can't miss!" Boy was I misled.
This book has none of the police procedural expertise of a Michael Connelly book. It has none of the sense of place of a CJ Box novel, and certainly lacks the twists and suspense of a Harlan Coben novel. Did these guys owe this guy a huge favor?
Every event in this book can be forseen like a loud freight train bearing down on you. The mystery is thin and too easy to figure out. The main characters' back story is nothing more than filler.
All the characters are so flawed, including the lead character, that I failed to connect with any of them.
I gave it two stars because, after all, I did finish it, and the hockey scenes were a nice diversion from a weak plot.
9 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
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too many details obscured the real story
I tried really hard to like this story. It came with great reviews, is written by a respected journalist, and it's about hockey - how could it go wrong? The story centers around Gus Carpenter, a sort of washed up journalist who has returned home to the small town wher he grew up after a failed stint trying to break a big story. As Gus settles in to his new "career" printing stories about council meetings and the new paint in the jailhouse, a big story (surprise surprise) drops in his lap. Gus finds himself investigating the death of his old hockey coach, who disappeared 20 years earlier. The rest of the story has Gus chasing leads, putting together some really obvious puzzle pieces, and trying to get out of his own way.
I have to say that the writing was excellent. While I didn't like many of the characters, I did think they were well developed. I think what prevented me from really getting into the story was that there were just too many threads. There was the lawsuit in Detroit, Gus' protection of his informant, the sale of the Marina, the rivalry between Soupy and Boynton, the mystery of the lake tunnels, all on top of the actual mystery of the Coach's death. There was just so much going on and some of it didn't really have anything to do with the story. There were also so many supporting characters. I think some of them were over developed - it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on.
Unfortunately, I can not recommend this story.
7 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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Mediocre Mystery
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.
5 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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"Random Suspenseless Trash"---NOT AT ALL!
The plan was to leave Starvation Lake, Michigan and never come back. But 1998 finds Augustus Carpenter, known to all as "Gus" back home after his successful newspaper career exploded on him in Detroit. Both he and the town are still haunted by the goal he let in close to the end of the state championship game and both have never been the same.
Now at thirty four, Gus is backing home, once again working for the local paper, Pilot. He lives in a small apartment above the storefront news room and across the street from the local bar where his teammates frequently congregate. The same issues that faced them as boys are now part of the power struggles and conflict they have as men.
Simmering disagreements are fueled by the fire of the past when parts of a damaged snowmobile wash up on the shore at the lake. While the snowmobile seems to be the same one Coach Blackburn was driving years ago before both disappeared through a hole in the ice, it can't possibly have made it here since that accident happened miles away. No body was ever recovered, but the assumption was that Blackburn was dead. While he probably is dead, the fact that the recovered snowmobile shows evidence of foul play ignites a local firestorm that finally explodes in a tale of deceit, treachery and unspeakable pain.
A debut novel that packs a punch, "Starvation Lake" by Bryan Gruley develops slowly through a variety of emotionally scarred and complex characters. Billed with the totally unnecessary subtitle "a mystery" the book operates on several levels with multiple mysteries and complex multiple storylines featuring heavily flawed characters. To delve into any of this at any level would seriously impact reader enjoyment by giving away far too much information.
Suffice it to say, if you are looking for a thriller or a simplistic mystery full of lightweight characters and violent action, this is not the novel for you. However if you are looking for a meaty novel where the characters are very human and occasionally vile, where there is plenty of back story and long descriptive scenes leading to powerful dialogue and emotional impact for the characters and readers, along with multiple mysteries, this is the book for you.
Gus Carpenter's promising career as a newspaper reporter in Detroit is over after he made a big mistake, and he was lucky to land a job running the daily in his hometown of Starvation Lake, Michigan. He spends his nights goaltending for a local hockey league, despite being held responsible by the entire town for allowing the goal that lost his team the state championship when he was 18. Gus gets ribbed a lot, but he bears it while he churns out the newspaper six days a week.
The past comes washing up on shore one day when a snowmobile emerges from Starvation Lake. It turns out to be the snowmobile that had supposedly gone down in nearby Walleye Lake ten years earlier, piloted by the town's hero, hockey coach Jack Blackburn. Gus's initial disinterest in the story becomes an obsession when he starts finding clues that lead to the whole town of Starvation living a lie. Meanwhile, his not-so-distant past in Detroit is coming back to haunt him in the form of court summonses and phone calls from his lawyer.
Though the end part of the book kept me turning the pages, determination to finish was what kept me going through much of the rest. It's not that the book is bad, but I had a hard time rooting for Gus. He's such a whipping boy, wearing his failure like a stone around his neck while he plods through life. It was also frustrating the way Gus went around asking questions but not really pressing anyone for answers, even his best friend, who WANTS to talk to him, and his mother, who obviously knows more than she's letting on. It's annoying when an author shows us that there are clues, but we don't get to see them and the protagonist is either too stupid or disinterested to find out what they are for us. Why should I care if Gus doesn't care? And last, though this could be a real plus if you're a hockey buff, a great deal of the story took place on the ice during hockey games, and a great deal of ink is used to describe the action in the games. Though I don't mind such color in novels, I do prefer just slightly less.
I do have to say that I wound up liking the book more by its end than I did in the middle, and the mystery Gus solved twisted and turned. Gus himself won some redemption in the end, so it certainly wasn't a waste of my time to read it.
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Ice Hockey and Investigative Reporting
This is a debut novel by the author, who draws on his background in newspaper reporting to create a mystery where the main character is a small town reporter/editor. There is a lot about ice hockey, and a lot about the newspaper business and investigative reporting including confidential informants. It may seem like a little bit too much hockey, but stick with it. The story draws you in as the plot progresses, and it will keep you up late.
This is a complex plot that goes in some unexpected directions. You would think that in a small town everyone would know everyone else's business. Most people have secrets that even their neighbors and their closest friends don't know about. It is one of those stories where you have to figure out who is doing what to whom.
