Broken Bayou is author Jennifer Moorhead’s debut thriller. Protagonist Willa Watters, a child psychologist with a new book to promote, throws herself off the deep end during her first major television interview about the book. To escape the blowback, she returns to Broken Bayou, Louisiana where she spent many summers with her mother and sister in the home of a pair of now-dead aunts. Ostensibly, Watters is collecting a bunch of her mother’s memorabilia left the the aunts’ attic.
While there, as a drought drains the bayou, local police are finding oil barrels filled with the remains of women, the work of a serial killer. Almost daily, either barrels or old sunken vehicles are dredged up. Watters finds her past is dredged up as well. She and her little sister (who has fetal alcohol syndrome) were victims of their alcoholic bipolar mother. Will the very people Watters trusted be the ones that bring her down?
The prose here is taut. Suspense and malevolence ooze from every page. Every time I thought I figured out whodunnit, Wham! Another suspect pops up. An amazing tense debut.
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Broken Bayou (Thomas & Mercer, July 1, 2024) is available through:
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