Author: Bryan Gruley
Published: April 1, 2025 by Severn House
Format: Kindle, 336 pages
Genre: Thriller
Series: Bitterfrost #1
Blurb: Thirteen years ago, former ice hockey star Jimmy Baker quit the game after almost killing an opponent. Now, as the Zamboni driver for the amateur team in his hometown of Bitterfrost, Michigan, he’s living his penance. Until the morning he awakens to the smell of blood . . .
Jimmy soon finds himself arrested for a brutal double murder. The kicker? He has no memory of the night in question. And as the evidence racks up against him, Jimmy’s case is skating on thin ice. Could he have committed such a gruesome crime?
As his defence attorney, Devyn Payne and prosecuting detective Garth Klimmek race to uncover the truth, time is running out for Jimmy. Because all he can really be sure of is that he is capable of taking a life. The question is, in his blacked-out state, did he take two?
My Opinion: Bryan Gruley is one of those authors I’d read in the past and somehow let slip off my radar. That is, until Bitterfrost jolted him right to the forefront. This novel unfolds with a quiet intensity set deep in the heart of Midwestern Noir. An atmospheric blend of moral ambiguity, isolation, and hard truths.
Gruley builds a town that’s equal parts physically remote and emotionally stranded, where hockey isn’t just a sport, it’s the one fragile thread that might offer hope of getting out. That theme of escape, reminiscent of Fredrik Backman’s Beartown, echoes throughout the story as broken characters navigate corruption, trauma, the messy ethics of survival, and flickers of hope.
The pacing is deliberate, withholding backstory until just the right moment, then delivering a twist that feels both surprising and, in hindsight, inevitable. You don’t cheer for these characters because they’re perfect, you root for them because they’re real. Flawed, haunted, and trying.
This isn’t a story of redemption wrapped in a bow. Instead, it closes with an exhale and a sense of earned endurance. The people may still be broken. The town, still bleak. But something has shifted just enough for the reader to feel it.
This is the first in a series. I’m not sure when the second book will be released or where the story will go, but I know for certain I won’t let this author fall off the radar again.
Jimmy soon finds himself arrested for a brutal double murder. The kicker? He has no memory of the night in question. And as the evidence racks up against him, Jimmy’s case is skating on thin ice. Could he have committed such a gruesome crime?
As his defence attorney, Devyn Payne and prosecuting detective Garth Klimmek race to uncover the truth, time is running out for Jimmy. Because all he can really be sure of is that he is capable of taking a life. The question is, in his blacked-out state, did he take two?
My Opinion: Bryan Gruley is one of those authors I’d read in the past and somehow let slip off my radar. That is, until Bitterfrost jolted him right to the forefront. This novel unfolds with a quiet intensity set deep in the heart of Midwestern Noir. An atmospheric blend of moral ambiguity, isolation, and hard truths.
Gruley builds a town that’s equal parts physically remote and emotionally stranded, where hockey isn’t just a sport, it’s the one fragile thread that might offer hope of getting out. That theme of escape, reminiscent of Fredrik Backman’s Beartown, echoes throughout the story as broken characters navigate corruption, trauma, the messy ethics of survival, and flickers of hope.
The pacing is deliberate, withholding backstory until just the right moment, then delivering a twist that feels both surprising and, in hindsight, inevitable. You don’t cheer for these characters because they’re perfect, you root for them because they’re real. Flawed, haunted, and trying.
This isn’t a story of redemption wrapped in a bow. Instead, it closes with an exhale and a sense of earned endurance. The people may still be broken. The town, still bleak. But something has shifted just enough for the reader to feel it.
This is the first in a series. I’m not sure when the second book will be released or where the story will go, but I know for certain I won’t let this author fall off the radar again.
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