RIVER DEEP

Gruley returns to the Michigan town of Bitterfrost to investigate a violent incident that introduces another crime wave.

The opening disaster, however tragic, seems remarkably straightforward. Catriona Dulaney, the offspring of a troubled family, drives a car carrying her longtime partner, Samuel Hardt, and their 8-month-old twins, Liam and Logan, into the Jako River, drowning the twins and nearly herself before she’s rescued by Bill Hooper, a one-eyed ex-cop who just happens to be on the scene. Accident or murder? After an eight-hour interrogation, consulting psychologist Dr. Jacob Jarman, dispatched from Lansing to the Upper Peninsula, manages to extract a confession from the traumatized Cat, and the case is ready to go to trial, with district attorney Genevieve Harris aided by Sammy’s cousin, assistant prosecutor Devyn Payne, who’s just retreated from an experimental year away in Hamtramck. Even though Devyn knows nothing about the pressure on Hooper from downstate crime boss Mario Rooney and not much more about the fault lines threatening the local police, she doesn’t like the way things smell, and she abruptly switches sides to take on the defense of Cat, an old enemy whose excellent reasons for wishing Devyn dead readers will remember from Bitterfrost (2025). Gruley’s densely imagined plot will claim several more victims before the slow-motion destruction of the Dulaney family is complete, at least for this installment.

A compelling demonstration of the wisdom that seeing events unfold before your eyes doesn’t always reveal their truth.