Little Town Blues

Is it a genre-bending spin on the police procedural novel? Or a stylized variation on the mystery-horror novel with touches of melodrama… Or is it a ghost story with a splash of parapsychology?

Set in the mythical New England microcosm of Fryebury Falls, Little Town Blues tells the story of nine characters, in the spring, summer, and fall of 1984: Mild-mannered police chief Mike Melanson, his eccentric, prophetic wife “Miss Julie” and their empathetic son, Adam; the gifted and tarnished Pearson brothers, former best-selling writer Sam and former high school coach and teacher, George, marked by tragedy and scandal; hard-boiled musician, Moira Davis and her precocious teenage daughter, Maygyn, going through her own coming-of-age story; and the diabolical deputy Jack Cleary and his emotionally tortured brain-injured son, J.J. This interwoven mosaic of small-town neuroses and psychoses leads to a quirky scandal involving the chief of police.

Little Town Blues critiques small-town America through the lens of ethics, traditions, creativity, repression, the illusion of fame and diversity, gender identity, and undiagnosed mental illnesses. In his first novel, David Gonthier illustrates how the unfolding of one event might easily be forgotten because of the unfolding of another event… just like in our own lives.