I’m halfway through the Mystery Writers of America Edgar nominees for Best First Novel by an American Author. Chicago’s own Bryan Gruley is the author of Starvation Lake, a mystery that features way more hockey than I ever thought I’d put up with.
The blurbs on the book are notable. Harlan Coben is long one of my favorites, and his promo is not surprising given the sports connection – his protagonist Myron Bolitar is a former pro basketball player and sports agent. Other blurbs come from Michael Connelly, C.J. Box, George Pelecanos, and the lesser-known Michael Harvey. Gruley’s book had the paradoxical effect of making me want to remind myself what Michael Harvey’s written. Answer: The Chicago Way and The Fifth Floor.
Starvation Lake’s a town in Michigan, a place where small-town newspaper editor Gus Carpenter grew up, played junior hockey for the legendary Coach Blackburn’s River Rats and personally lost the team’s only chance at a trophy, and came home to lick his wounds after being fired, amid much reporting-related scandal, from the Detroit Times. Details of the scandal are doled out slowly in the first section of the book, then build to help ratchet up the tension.
Gus is managing the just fine with the help of a too-ballsy-for-her-own-good junior reporter named Joanie, has the chance to redeem himself if he can earn a promotion, and is right back where he used to be, half in love with former girlfriend Darlene and playing hockey with his former River Rats teammates, now all grown up. Like little acorns make mighty oaks, the friends (good guys) and foes (bad guys) haven’t changed much. But then one day, Coach Blackburn’s snowmobile emerges from the lake where it had fallen through the ice a dozen years ago… with a bullet hole in it. Blackburn had been buried in absentia, as the body was never found, and the whole thing was written up as a tragic accident. Was the coach murdered? Or was it an accident, as one of Gus’ friends maintains?
Newspaper reporting skills equal mystery-solving skills, and Gus goes to work, uncovering information that he was too naive to see the first time around, including answers to long-buried questions like “Why won’t mom let me overnight with Coach Blackburn at his billet? All my friends’ moms let them go!” and “Why did Coach Blackburn suddenly shut out my friend who’s the best player on my team?” and “Where do some of these guys get all the money they spend?”
Gus solves the mystery and justice prevails, but not without a lot of anguish and tragedy. Starvation Lake is a tightly plotted and immensely readable book; even the hockey is so well-done I didn’t skip over it. As many mysteries are, it’s written in the first person and the character’s voice is clear and engaging. Here’s a sample:
Soupy was what hockey players admiringly call a “dangler,” with hands that cradled the puck as if it were no heavier than a tennis ball. He could dangle it between his skates, behind his back, one-handed, backhanded, skating backward, on one knee. All the while the puck stuck to his stick like a nickname. He had a thousand moves that he’d practiced for hours in his basement or late at night on a patch of ice behind his garage. He liked to practice in the darkness, the darker the better, so he was forced to rely not on his eyes, but on simply feeling the puck on his stick blade with his amazingly sure hands. That way he’d never have to look down, he could always be scanning the ice for an opening or an open man, and he’d always be ready when the opposing defenseman was lining him up for a hit.
The mystery’s weakness is too-heavy signaling of the motivation related to Gus’ childhood backstory… pretty early on, I had Coach Blackburn pegged and the reader is always suspicious when they bury an empty casket because they can’t find the body. But it’s a skillful book, and like A Bad Day for Sorry, has the makings of a series. It’s a bit of a close call, but Starvation Lake takes the lead in the Literary Lunchbox Edgar competition.
- Starvation Lake – Bryan Gruley
- A Bad Day for Sorry – Sophie Littlefield
- The Weight of Silence – Heather Gudenkauf
Still to read: The Shadow of Gotham, The Girl She Used to Be, and Black Water Rising!
Blackwater Rising
Why is Attica Locke’s mystery novel Blackwater Rising set in 1981? So that the protagonist, Jay Porter, can have a backstory of teenage involvement in the Black Power movement of the late 60s and early 70s. The author uses the tension associated with southern race relations to build urgency in her novel. On her website, she explains how her family history strongly influenced her writing process.
However, I had a hard time knowing what to make of this mystery, which is one of six up for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Author.
It’s certainly an American story. Jay Porter grows up in the smart and poor in Texas, and at the age of 19, finds himself drawn to the more assertive branches of the civil rights movement, egged on by an even-more-involved white girl who disappears after Jay’s arrest and trial. Much is made of the second chance he receives when found not guilty, and he vows to stay out of trouble. Flash forward to 1981, when Jay is a down-at-his-heels lawyer with offices in a strip mall and clients that include ladies for hire. Big coincidence – his old girlfriend is now mayor, playing both sides of the fence at every opportunity. Add in black-white tensions related to union integration, an elderly nutcase who’s the lone holdout when an oil company shell is buying up all the houses in a particular area (where black sludge is rising to the surface), and a birthday cruise that is interrupted when Jay and his pregnant wife rescue a woman from a murderer.
The book’s been criticized in a review by the Washington Post for being murky and having poorly drawn characters, among other failings. Other reviews blurbed on Locke’s website are fawning (or carefully edited). My own perspective is somewhere in between. Jay Porter is very well-nuanced, his perspective is well-defined, and although the reader may wish at times to grab him by the shoulders and shake him for being such an idiot, he’s compelling and believable. Other characters are more two-dimensional (although we imagine Locke sees the “did she or didn’t she” betrayal by Mayor Cynthia as adding complexity to her character) and Jay’s wife Bernie is practically a Japanese body-pillow girlfriend.
Plot-wise, Blackwater Rising suffers from a typical first novel problem – too many plot threads that all, conveniently, relate to one another and too many interwoven characters. Locke has enough fodder in this book for several books. And although Porter doesn’t succeed in his goal of exposing evil, in the last pages of Blackwater Rising, he has taken on the lone nutcase as a client in a civil suit. (Can you see the second book in the series on the horizon?)
That being said, it’s still better than The Weight of Silence, so Blackwater Rising ranks #3 and Gudenkauf’s book falls to #4 on the Literary Lunchbox Edgars for Best First Novel by an American Author.
Still to read: In the Shadow of Gotham (on my bedside table) and The Girl She Used to Be (I’m #1 on the library hold list).
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Posted in Commentary, Review
Tagged A Bad Day for Sorry, Attica Locke, Black Power, Blackwater Rising, civil rights, Edgars, mystery writers of america, oil company, Review, Starvation Lake, The Weight of Silence, Washington Post