Long Bright River by Liz Moore

"...all of them gone. People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed souls."

Although marketed as a suspense/crime thriller, I would have to say that it is more of a character study and a family drama. Yes, one of the main characters, Mickey Fitzpatrick, is a cop with the Philadelphia Police Department, but she's on the Kensignton beat and the main focus of the book is on her dysfunctional relationship with her family and her lack of personal relationships. Yes, the story does have a series of murders in it -- drug addicted women -- some of whom Mickey knows. This novel does not focus on a police investigation of those cases. It's the story of two sisters who couldn't be more different. One an addict who lives on the streets and the other a cop. Kacey and her older sister, Mickey, haven't spoken in 5 years. Nevertheless, Mickey still looks for Kacey on the Kensignton streets and lives in constant fear that she will find her sister dead of an overdose, or worse. NO SPOILERS.

The narrative is unusual, lacking in quotation marks, and is told from Mickey's viewpoint. There are some time shifts as Mickey reflects on her childhood growing up with her younger sister, Kacey, in the care of their grandmother. With their mother dead and their father long gone, the girls mostly shift for themselves and Kacey eventually falls prey to drugs. Mickey is righteous and rigid, disapproving but still feeling that she must take care of her sister. Overall the tone of this story was quite depressing to me. I understand the scourge of drugs. I've felt the pain of losing a relative to drugs. I know that something must be done to save the users. It seems that all the efforts directed toward this end haven't been successful and so many different methods have been tried from rehab to methadone to NarcAnon. I have no answers. It was a difficult read for me and although the writing was quite good, I found it slow moving and it took me longer than usual to finish. I think, however, that I was expecting a police procedural and a murder case. Drugs lead to broken families, crime, poverty and death and it's usually a one-way ride. Drugs corrupt and destroy people and by extension, everyone the user knows. Police are not immune to the effects on a community. There are a million reasons why people get into drugs and you know, if you could, you'd try to prevent that from happening. And though you'd likely fail, because people will do what they do in the end, I'm sure that the struggle is real and it's everywhere.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin RandomHouse and Riverhead Books for this e-book ARC to read and review.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre - depressing family drama centered on drug addiction, dysfunction