Book Review: "Long Bright River" by Liz Moore
“Long Bright River” by Liz Moore
Synopsis: Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing.
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.—Riverhead Books
Rating (out of 5): 5
Review: This one has been out for almost half a year, and I am surprised I waited so long. While I’m a crime/mystery/spooky literature junky (ohhh bad choice of words for this review), I don’t love the police procedural. Many of us are not feeling so warm and fuzzy about the police-industrial complex right now, and I am no exception, so it was with hesitation that I picked this one up. I was wrong. This book is brilliant beginning to end.
I talk about this a lot, but it is a rare crime novel that is of high literary quality and also compelling and absorbing. I’m always searching these out. My go-to authors for these are generally Tana French, Megan Abbott, and Laura Lippman, and I am so pleased to add Liz Moore to this list.
Mickey patrols the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, the same streets her sister Kacey works as a heroin addict and sex worker. After a brutal childhood, the two sisters have veered in wildly different directions, and are no longer on speaking terms. The novel opens with the discovery of a murdered sex worker, and soon after we learn that Kacey has gone missing. Mickey picks up the case secretly and in earnest, desperate to find her sister despite their estrangement.
The book is both brutal and tender: there is a good deal of violence and the ravages of the opioid epidemic are harrowing. Mickey is also cold and closed-off: I worried I wouldn’t connect to her, but the glimpses we get at the warmth inside of her, like her relationship with her son, are completely humanizing.
The entire novel is incredibly suspenseful, and I powered through it in the span of a day. Moore’s characters are complex and multi-faceted, and that in combination with her brilliant pacing and plotting makes for one of the best reads of the year.
Trigger Warnings: Violence, sexual violence, opioid abuse, police brutality
TL;DR: Don’t sleep on this one. I have fully evangelized about this book to just about everyone. If you can handle some grittier elements in your reading, this is an entirely absorbing, completely brilliant crime novel.
If you liked this; try:
“Lady in the Lake” by Laura Lippman (my review here)
“Baltimore Blues” by Laura Lippman
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