Danny Bedford is a man-child, an outcast in the quiet rural town of Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. He is a gentle giant living there with very few friends and no family. While ice skating when he was eight, he fell through the ice and remained under water until rescue reached him over ten minutes later. It caused brain damage. His parents both drowned trying to save him. Danny is slow but kind and sweet. Mindy Knolls, forty, a waitress at the Friedenshutten Restaurant, has always been nice to him since their childhood. She sticks up for Danny when the mean spirited, bully Deputy Mike Sokowski, who she has had an on-again, off- again relationship, ridicules Danny.

Mr. and Mrs. Bedford, Owners of the laundromat let Danny take care of their business in exchange for a small room over the shop and fifty dollars "walking around money". Danny does a good job. He is also very good at wood carving small animals. His detail is perfect. He is finishing a robin he made for Mindy for her birthday. Later that night he heads to her rundown trailer on the outskirts of town to present her with his newspaper wrapped gift. He finds Cindy dead, laying in a pool of blood. At the scene is Deputy Sokowski and his sidekick, Carl. They set up Danny for the horrific murder they committed.

Deputy Mike Sokowski is rotton to the core, a bully, an alcoholic and deals in weed. He has tormented Danny since childhood, with help from his ignorant partner in crime, Carl. He uses Mindy for sex and when she refuses to participate, Sokowski brutually murders her while ordering Carl to hold her down. Sokowski believes the town people will believe him when he tells them that Danny committed the crime.

DEEP WINTER is a fast paced thriller told from multiple points of view. The manhunt to catch Danny through frozen forests, set off more killings. It is a wild chase and very graphic, becoming completely out of control. Lester, the aging sheriff is slow to figure out the real killer , but has his doubts that it is Danny, as well as most of the towns people.

Rooting for Danny, the pages flew bringing a smashing finale to a great and very exciting debut read by Samuel W. Gailey. I eagerly await your next book.

Book Summary

In the small town of Wyalusing in eastern Pennsylvania, a woman is found brutally murdered one winter night. Next to the body is Danny Bedford, a misunderstood man who suffered a tragic brain injury that left him with limited mental capabilities. Despite his simple life, his intimidating size has caused his neighbors to ostracize him out of fear of what he may do. So when the local bully-turned-deputy discovers Danny with the body, it’s obvious that Danny’s physical strength has finally become deadly. But in the long, freezing night that follows, the murder is only the first in a series of crimes that viciously upset the town order—an unstoppable chain of violence that appears to make Danny’s guilt undeniable.

With the threat of an approaching blizzard, the local sheriff and a state trooper work through the predawn hours to restore some semblance of order to Wyalusing. As they investigate one unspeakable incident after another, they discover an intricate web of lies revealing that not everything is quite what it seems.

With echoes of Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan and Tana French’s In the Woods, Samuel W. Gailey’s Deep Winter is a richly atmospheric and ingeniously plotted debut, surprising to the final page. It’s impossible to escape this bone-chilling story of deception, where the truth is uncertain and something sinister lurks just below the surface. . . .