Bryan Gruley Combines Hockey and Crime in 'Bitterfrost'

Former journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Bryan Gruley, joins Writer’s Voices to discuss the first book in his crime thriller series, Bitterfrost. Set in the fictious town of Bitterfrost, Michigan, the story follows former ice-hocky player, Jimmy Baker, who finds himself the main suspect of a double homicide. According to Gruley, “…Jimmy wakes up on his kitchen floor. He’s covered in blood… his door’s open, he can’t remember exactly what happened or how he got there, and as it turns out… he was in a bar earlier that night… and on this particular night there were two young guys from the Detroit area who were… drunk and they were harassing the barmaid who was a friend of Jimmy’s, so he intervened… and the next day… one of the guys is found beaten to death and then a few days later, the other guy is found beaten to death and so the prime suspect here is Jimmy, given his being in the wrong place at the wrong time and his past… and so he turns to a younger woman named Devyn Payne… Devyn takes on Jimmy’s case and her opponent, in effect, is a detective named Garth Klimmek… so it’s Klimmek’s job to get [the] marshal the evidence that will convict Jimmy, it’s Devyn’s job to get him acquitted, and Jimmy’s in the middle of this and he can’t be very much help because his memory is shot…”

As far as how Gruley begins crafting the plot of his novels, he said, “I have an idea of what happens at the beginning… some bad thing, and I know 2 or 3 characters… actually the first character I knew was Devyn Payne because I had written an entire novel before I started Bitterfrost in which Devyn was a major character… so I sort of knew Devyn… I know where I’m going to have a murder here… then, I invented Jimmy and then, of course, I needed a detective and so I created Garth Klimmek, and we’re off, right?” However, after completing the novel, he did have to make some major changes with the help of his editor. He explained, “..my editor came back to me and before we got into a full edit, she said, you know chapter 6, at that time chapter 6 was Jimmy lying on his kitchen floor, and she said, ‘I think you ought to make that chapter one.’ …in about 10 minutes I realized she was 100% correct… and now I think it’s the perfect start… I’m really glad Vic, Victoria, suggested that and you know, you’re in middle of this intense scene and you’re like, ‘What the hell happened?’ That’s what you want readers thinking. You pose questions and you’ll answer them eventually.”