- Hardcover: 621 pages
- Publisher: Thorndike Press; Lrg edition (July 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1410416739
- ISBN-13: 978-1410416735
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.2 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
First Sentence: The cast-iron railing wobbled in his hand as he climbed the porch steps.
Gus Carpenter grew up in the small summer-resort town of Salvation Lake, Michigan, and was goalie for the town's ice hockey team. He was hoping to become a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist in Detroit when his beloved boyhood hockey coach, Jack Blackburn, died by drowning in a snowmobiling accident.
Now, five year's later, Gus was fired from his job in Detroit, and is back as assistant editor of the Salvation Pilot. A police call sends him to Salvation Lake where part of a snowmobile is found. Not only is it the one that belonged to Blackburn, but there's a bullet in it.
I'll admit this book started out a bit slow for me. I'm not a sports fan, and certainly not an ice hockey fan, so I wasn't certain I was going to like this. However, the book quickly turned to being a book about people, rather than sport, and I never had any desire to stop reading.
I read for character. Gruley creates great characters. Moreover, he creates fully-developed, interesting, realistically flawed, human characters. None of them are excessive or over the top. Instead, they are believable.
Gruley also creates a very strong sense of place. He takes you to a town past it's height of success, but struggling to maintain. It's a town full of people who've lived there all their lives and see no reason to live anywhere else. He makes you feel the challenge of the weather but these are people accustomed to living with those challenges.
The story is very well plotted and well written. One thing I personally appreciated was at points when other authors would have been tempted to insert a portent into the story; Gruley refrained from so doing. Rather than feeling manipulated into reading on, the plot and story's pace compelled me to keep reading.
Gruley has written a wonderful debut novel. I, for one, look forward to his next book.
Gus Carpenter grew up in the small summer-resort town of Salvation Lake, Michigan, and was goalie for the town's ice hockey team. He was hoping to become a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist in Detroit when his beloved boyhood hockey coach, Jack Blackburn, died by drowning in a snowmobiling accident.
Now, five year's later, Gus was fired from his job in Detroit, and is back as assistant editor of the Salvation Pilot. A police call sends him to Salvation Lake where part of a snowmobile is found. Not only is it the one that belonged to Blackburn, but there's a bullet in it.
I'll admit this book started out a bit slow for me. I'm not a sports fan, and certainly not an ice hockey fan, so I wasn't certain I was going to like this. However, the book quickly turned to being a book about people, rather than sport, and I never had any desire to stop reading.
I read for character. Gruley creates great characters. Moreover, he creates fully-developed, interesting, realistically flawed, human characters. None of them are excessive or over the top. Instead, they are believable.
Gruley also creates a very strong sense of place. He takes you to a town past it's height of success, but struggling to maintain. It's a town full of people who've lived there all their lives and see no reason to live anywhere else. He makes you feel the challenge of the weather but these are people accustomed to living with those challenges.
The story is very well plotted and well written. One thing I personally appreciated was at points when other authors would have been tempted to insert a portent into the story; Gruley refrained from so doing. Rather than feeling manipulated into reading on, the plot and story's pace compelled me to keep reading.
Gruley has written a wonderful debut novel. I, for one, look forward to his next book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
105 reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Cleverly plotted rural mystery.....
13 Feb 2009
Format: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.
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 18 people found the following review helpful
Starvation Lake: Unique And Well Worth A Visit.
11 Mar 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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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 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.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
I LOVED this book!!!!!!
28 Feb 2009
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
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