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.
It’s kind of a funny story about how I came to own LONG BRIGHT RIVER. And kind of a funny story about when I started reading it, too.
I mean…maybe not actually funny, but whatever, you know what I mean!
If you’re like me at all, sometimes when you start watching a show & the vibe is just Extremely Your Shit, maybe you then go online and see if you can find a blog post or an article about books that have a similar vibe as the show. I do this all the time. Two of the semi-recent examples I can remember are Only Murders in the Building, and Mare of Easttown.
So that’s how I found LONG BRIGHT RIVER by Liz Moore. I was obsessed with Mare of Easttown when it came out…just everything about it spoke to me. It was bleak & emotional, and the mystery/crime elements were riveting to me.
But like a hundred (or way, way more) other books, I just shelved LONG BRIGHT RIVER & didn’t get around to it. But the other week I was just craving that exact vibe, that moody-as-fuck, heartwrenching crime story, so I picked up LONG BRIGHT RIVER and dove in. And I could tell within 15-30 pages that this book was, like Mare of Easttown, also Extremely My Shit.
So then I did another thing I assume a lot of us book nerds do when we start a book by a new-to-us author: I went online & looked up other books by Liz Moore. And I was like “Ohhhhhhh, shit, ok!” when I saw THE GOD OF THE WOODS, because I had seen this book kind of taking off, on lots of best-of lists/bestseller lists, etc. And it was even on Barack Obama’s summer reading list! But I just hadn’t put it together that it was by the same author.
(I also did something I know for a fact a lot of us book nerds do, which was immediately hit ADD TO CART for THE GOD OF THE WOODS!)
Anyway!! On to the book, which was truly outstanding. I think maybe you’d put this in a sort of “literary thriller” section? That’s the best way I could think of to describe it. Or maybe it’s just a mystery? Maybe I’m overthinking it?
Michaela “Mickey” Fitzpatrick is a beat cop working the streets of a Philadelphia neighborhood called Kensington. It’s a low income area, with lots of crime, and a lot of folks have been impacted by the opioid crisis.
None more notably than Mickey herself. Mickey’s sister, Kacey, is an addict. The book bounces back and forth from the present to the past, and we see the relationship between Mickey & Kacey move from extremely close siblings to virtually estranged.
But as the book begins, Kacey has gone missing. And there’s been a string of murders, the victims are all women, and all sex workers and/or addicts. So with each body that’s discovered, Mickey’s heart kind of freezes in her chest. Because there’s every chance the latest victim could be Kacey. We’re given to understand that Kacey has “disappeared” before, but something about this time feels different. She has truly dropped off the map, and Mickey can’t turn up any answers regarding Kacey’s whereabouts.
This put me in the mindset of some of my favorite crime shows, like The Killing, Happy Valley, Sharp Objects…and of course the aforementioned Mare of Easttown. But too, it also reminded me of the period in my life where I was reading a lot of Dennis Lehane’s stuff…I think there’s more than a little bit of MYSTIC RIVER (the book & the movie) baked into the DNA of LONG BRIGHT RIVER. There’s an intense amount of grief at the center of all those stories I just mentioned, and I guess those are the types of crime stories that speak loudest to me.
I think anyone who has struggled with addiction, or known someone who has, will feel the impact of this story in a big way. I sure did. This was such a powerful, moving story. One that did, at times, feel utterly bleak and hopeless. But certainly there’s an undercurrent of hope running through the book. Because despite all the distance between them (and I haven’t even touched on a fraction of the reasons why), Mickey still cares for her sister and is determined to find out what’s happened to her.
Storygraph is a great resource for content warnings & I’m not going to attempt to cover them all here. But definitely want to mention the following things for readers to be aware of: addiction, emotional abuse, grooming, pregnancy, abandonment, and death of a parent. Again, this is not comprehensive, so just be mindful heading into this one.
It’s also extremely “of a place,” and feels very authentically Philly. You really get a feel for this neighborhood, and without going back to check, I don’t think the story takes us outside of it more than a time or two. This is also apparently being adapted into a Peacock limited series so that’s something to look forward to!
I loved this book completely. Liz Moore made a fan out of me inside of one chapter, and I could not wait to return to this book night after night. Definitely one of my favorite reads of the year, and one of the best mystery/crime novels I’ve read in ages.
Grimdark Dad 