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Gus Carpenter has a new boss, and he's not happy about it. The paper has been bought by bean counters and they aren't happy with the stories he's been writing. There's a new guy in town who wants to build a new hockey rink so his kid can star, and move on up to the big leagues. Gus is the only person who wants to look behind the curtain, wants Mr. Haskell to put the money on the table before the tax credits are given out, who doesn't want the town to put up their money first. All the town can see is a new rink, a new shot at greatness, and probably some jobs for the locals. Then there is a suicide. Gracie McBride hanged herself from a local landmark, the shoe tree. In northern Michigan, and perhaps in other rural places, there is a tradition of throwing pairs of shoes over the branches of a tree. Sometimes this marks a new relationship, sometimes it's a ritual of male bonding, sometimes it's just something to do. Gracie is Gus's second cousin, and spent a lot of time at Gus's house when they were younger. Now she's dead, and nobody wants to consider it anything other than the suicide it so obviously seems to be. Except Gus. He doesn't believe that Gracie would do this. As Gus investigates Gracie and her death, he also investigates her life after she left Starvation Lake. What he finds is not pretty, and takes him to places he never thought he'd see again. The Gracie he knew is not the Gracie of today. Gruley writes a lot about hockey. I'm here to tell you that you don't need to know a thing about the sport to enjoy Gruley's writing. Yes, some of it makes a handy metaphor for things that go on in anyone's life. Those are metaphors that non-hockey people can handle. The kinds of emotions that hockey arouses in Starvation Lake can be aroused by anything that matters to people, not just sports. The kinds of politics that go on in Starvation Lake go on in large towns as well; corruption knows no size limitations. THE HANGING TREE is a good mystery. Gus continues to figure out who he is in the wake of his Detroit disaster, and he seems to be a person on his way to better things, personally and professionally. § P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, August 2010
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