This one is gritty but it got a lot of hype and it piqued my interest.  It’s essentially a procedural crime novel set in the Kensington area of Philadelphia.  Kensington is treated with a certain amount of love, hard as that might be to believe as it’s one of the worst drug slums in the nation. 

Long Bright River
By Liz Moore – 2020
Rating:  7.5 (general fiction)/ C (crime) 

Our first person narrator, Mickey Fitzpatrick,  is a street cop on those bad streets, the same streets her sister  Casey, a drug addict and part time hooker, frequents.  There have been missing women here, some dead, some murdered even, some never reported. 

On the job, Mickey is between partners, a long term guy now on medical leave, and the new one who’’s not working out, inappropriate.  At home Mickey has a small boy from a prior domestic partner.  

The plot unfolds very slowly as Mickey reveals her background and that of her missing sister.  There are demons which drive her and her sister as well as the grandmother who raised them after their mother died long ago from her own addiction.  

The whole thing Is very involved with the parentless girls growing up in poverty and the broken family relationships.  There’s lots and lots of padding to the point it becomes more a tale of addiction, crime and street life than a mystery.