She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime stories 2024. She is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator and lives in Quincy, MA, with her husband and Obi-Wan Kenobi, their very playful cat.
[The Page 69 Test: Half In Love With Death; Writers Read: Emily Ross (December 2015); My Book, The Movie: Half In Love With Death]
At CrimeReads Ross tagged four novels that give a voice to blue-collar communities like Quincy, Massachusetts. One title on the list:
Micheal Harvey, BrightonRead about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
When I was a teen, I sometimes hung out with my sister and her boyfriend in Oak Square in Brighton MA. He called his colorful friends there “the buzzards.” I was not comfortable around them, but theytold good stories about some of the not-so-good things they’d done.
Michael Harvey’s crime thriller, Brighton, unflinchingly captures that same edgy blue-collar world with its daily dose of drunkenness, crime, violence, and racism. But it is also a novel about boyhood and two friends, Kevin Pearce and Bobby Scales, who are united by an act of violence that sends them off in different directions.
Kevin manages to escape Brighton and becomes a successful journalist. Bobby is left behind to accept the consequences. Years later, when Bobby becomes a suspect in a string of local murders, Kevin must return, ostensibly to help his friend, but also to face the past that won’t stay buried.
Brighton opens with Kevin skimming stones across the water. It’s a tranquil scene, but only for an instant. Things quickly turn dark in this novel that is as much about blue-collar neighborhoods like Brighton, places that can drag you under, as it is about the people there who struggle to stay above water.
--Marshal Zeringue
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