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For the title of her fourth novel, Long Bright River, Liz Moore borrowed a phrase from an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem, which describes a race of people who,
“Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.”
Moore’s thrilling new crime novel takes place in modern Philadelphia, far from Tennyson’s 19th century England, where Moore reimagines these suffering people as poverty stricken opioid addicts, and vulnerable women who are forced to sell their bodies to get a fix. The novel is told from the perspective of Mickey Fitzpatrick, a patrol cop in her early 30s who works in the opioid-ravaged Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Mickey is a straight-laced single mother, who is beleaguered by worries about her estranged younger sister, Kacey, a heroin addict living on the streets. When a string of female strangulation victims pop up in Mickey’s district, all of whom are junkies and sex workers, Mickey begins to worry about the safety of her sister who has been missing for about a month. Mickey begins an investigation into these murders of local women—women she grew up with or knew from her patrol routes—that is inextricably tied to her complicated relationship with her sister.
The present day investigation is offset with glimpses into Mickey and Kacey’s childhood, including flashbacks to their young mother’s death by overdose, the difficulty that came with being raised by a grandmother still reeling from the loss of her own young daughter, and their struggles with school and socialization. Mickey was a bright and studious child, who mostly kept to herself and whose talents were singled out by many of her teachers, while her Kacey maintained a healthier social life but had more difficulty with authority. Mickey describes her sister’s descent into addiction, how she began with skipping school, hanging out with the wrong crowd, sneaking out at night, and eventually having her first overdose at the age of 16. There is a closeness that is lost as a result of Kacey’s addiction, and Mickey grieves those years when her sister was no longer her closest friend and confidante, or shared her bed and every secret. These flashbacks into Mickey’s childhood are crucial in establishing the grounds for her hard exterior, and also her empathy for the victims of the murder spree—any one of them could be her sister.
Another crucial thread in these flashbacks is the revelation of Mickey’s relationship with Simon Cleare, a local detective who Mickey first met at an after-school PAL program, when she was just 14. Simon is thirteen years her senior, and the two develop a mentor-mentee relationship that Mickey cherishes in her mostly loveless adolescence. The relationship becomes sexual only after Mickey legally enters adulthood, but it is immediately clear that Simon and Mickey’s “friendship” was grooming for a predatory sexual relationship. With this storyline, Moore asserts that this cycle of addiction and poverty does not merely produce more addicts, but also young people who are vulnerable enough to be manipulated by adults posing as well-meaning mentors. In this cycle there is an absence of love and compassion, that all too often leads to the predation of young boys and girls who are without proper defense mechanisms.
Long Bright River is in many ways about the ways that poverty and addiction can ravage a community, and the ways in which unjust societal institutions prop up these evils that all but prevent those who are born into disadvantage from rising out of it. Moore is thoughtful in her depiction of the victims of this system, refusing to place blame on the shoulders of her characters, and providing each of them with a nuanced character arc rather than a stereotype. While the novel contains plenty of plot twists and classic thriller suspense moments, it is grounded in fundamental discussions of privilege and class, and most centrally, human relationships. Moore has written both a propulsive crime novel and a compelling family story, with fully developed characters who experience love, trauma, and the intersections between the two. A rare achievement that readers will devour quickly until the final pages when they don’t want it to end.