Bryan Gruley

Bryan Gruley is the Chicago Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal.

His debut mystery is Starvation Lake.

From his Q & A with Julia Buckley:

Bryan, your new book, Starvation Lake, is set in Michigan , which is where you grew up. Is Starvation Lake based on a real place?

There is a Starvation Lake near my parents' cottage in northern lower Michigan. I stole the name, made the lake a lot bigger, and put a town on it. The physical and emotional geography of my novel's setting borrows from that beautiful part of the country, as well as the many small towns I've written about as a journalist.

The mystery immerses the reader in the world of small-town hockey, and the descriptions of hockey practices, hockey games, are some of the most exciting scenes in the book. Do you play hockey?

I've been playing hockey since I learned on backyard rinks in Detroit as a boy. Now I skate two or three times a week at Johnny's Ice House in Chicago 's West Loop. I'm not a very good player, but I play hard and try to keep learning. My pals would probably say I'm not the best student in class.[read on]

Read more about Starvation Lake and visit Bryan Gruley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue