Bryan Gruley mixes love of hockey into newest novel

Bryan Gruley is a writer’s writer. He had a successful career as a journalist, starting at small-town newspapers before jumping to The Wall Street Journal, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for the publication’s coverage of 9/11.

Following his retirement, Gruley began writing mystery books — a genre that many attempt to break into, but few succeed. His most recent book, “Bitterfrost,” is a challenging and complex mystery featuring hockey as a major plot element.

One constant in Gruley’s life is that he has always played amateur hockey, beginning in his school years. Today, he plays pickup games and is a member of a league at Traverse City’s Centre Ice Arena.

One of the main characters in the book, Devyn Payne, is a woman hockey player who earned a law degree at the University of Michigan before returning to her small northern Michigan hometown of Bitterfrost to work as an attorney. She’s just as effective with her legal briefs as she is with her slapshots.

As I read the book, it reminded me of the West Coast writer and showrunner Michael Connelly, who successfully integrated strong, interesting and resourceful women into his Harry Bosch mystery series.

Payne’s mother owns Bitterfrost’s minor league hockey team and skating rink, which is beloved in the community. However, that love is challenged when Jimmy Baker, the rink’s Zamboni driver, becomes embroiled in a double murder. Baker is a former minor league hockey player who seriously injured a competitor in an on-ice brawl.

Gruley said the plot involves a true-crime case from northern Michigan and a “violent altercation” that occurred during an NHL game in 2004.

“My mysteries are rooted in some real-world situations,” he said.

Inspired by the book “Darker Than Night,” by fellow journalist and Michigan native Tom Henderson, Gruley borrowed from a notorious murder case that occurred in the Mio area in 1985, when two deer hunters from lower Michigan were killed after hassling a waitress in a bar. Two brothers were convicted in 2003 when an eyewitness came forward, although the bodies were never found.

Gruley even used nearly the exact words of the real-life witness in his book: “You are going to get me killed.”

In “Bitterfrost,” Gruley deftly keeps the reader guessing about who is trying to frame Baker and why. There are plenty of switchbacks and false trails, including at Baker’s murder trial.

The author said he not only loves writing about hockey but also about small-town “stuff,” having lived in and covered small towns in his career as a journalist.

“I gravitated toward writing about small towns and their small-town grudges and small-town politics,” he said.

For him, the hardest thing about writing “Bitterfrost” was getting it done.

“I don’t outline, and early on, I put so many balls in the air that I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said.

As an example, early in “Bitterfrost,” he paints Baker, the suspected killer, as an inveterate “grammar Nazi,” which at the time was going to be a throwaway.

“As I got near the end of the book, I figured I could use that and went back to the beginning and did some rewriting,” he said. As a result, grammar becomes a pivotal element of the murder trial — very Sherlockian.

“As I write a book, I have to feel my way through and figure out what I am going to do with all the problems I created three months earlier,” Gruley said.

Not all loose ends are tied up in the book, but the author said that’s “real life.”

As “Bitterfrost” skates to a successful and violent surprise ending, you’ll be thinking about a sequel, which Gruley said he’s in the process of writing.