Bob Moyer has found a new mystery/ thriller writer, and he likes her literary debut. It probably helps that the setting is Louisiana, one of Bob’s favorites.

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer

BROKEN BAYOU. By Jennifer Moorhead. Thomas & Mercer. 265 pages. $16.99.

Very few writers can make a reader both gasp and wince. Jennifer Moorhead does both in her debut novel Broken Bayou. Suffice it to say, details of those evocative moments can’t be described here, but they are surprises entirely appropriate for the main character, Dr. Willa Waters.

A successful child psychologist, podcaster and author with a new book, she rips off her blouse in a TV interview when she hears a trigger word. To avoid the furor and take time to figure out what’s happening, she returns to Broken Bayou, Louisiana. She spent summers there with her mother and sister until she was 17. She has an excuse to return — some family belongings wait for her in her recently deceased aunt’s’ home.

When she gets to town, she finds the viral video of her attack has preceded her. Townspeople look at her the way they looked at her hip-swinging, psychotic mother. The focus shifts from her quickly, however. As the Bayou recedes, barrels of women’s remains bob up, the work of a serial killer. Then she finds an item from her past in the family belongings that might tie her to the murders. Will the act her mother made her commit surface from these same waters? If it does, will it sink the career of her old boyfriend, now a deputy sheriff?

Dr. Waters’ character evolves as the plot progresses. The author posits some tricky plot twists, and even the red herrings she tosses into the narrative have a little heart and soul. She does a good job of keeping us from seeing around the next corner, and the ending makes sense. That means Broken Bayou makes for good, quick reading.