Terry DiDomenico: July 2010 Archives

Just the name fires up the imagination - Starvation Lake.

Even better, it's a real place - a small town in Michigan that has folklore of its own. And following the dictum to write what you know, newcomer Bryan Gruley used the locale as the setting for his suspense novels, starting with last year's Starvation Lake and continuing with this month's release The Hanging Tree.

Starvation Lake is a small community whose claim to fame was almost winning an ice hockey championship. Indeed, much of the recent history of the town is connected in some way to its hockey.  In Starvation Lake, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the slowly dying town. The same snowmobile that belonged to Starvation's legendary hockey coach whose fatal accident happened five miles away and on a different lake.  The evidence points to murder.

Our narrator is the editor of the local newspaper, Gus Carpenter, who recently returned to Starvation after he failed to make it big with the Detroit Times. Years earlier he was the unfortunate goalie who let a state championship get away that not only crushed the dreams of his coach but also earned him the enmity of his fellow townspeople. Investigating the murder of his former coach leads Gus to discover holes in the town's past that seem to conceal dark and disturbing secrets.