Tag Archives: Michael Koryta

Fiction, Reviews

‘Never Far Away,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

“Every now and then, a bit of work will come your way with sincerity, Mr. Blackwell. The man in the middle won’t have any skin in the game. He’ll speak honestly to you, asking for the unique help that only a few people on the planet can provide. And if you accept, for one occasion at least, you’ll have the pleasure of working with a clean heart if not clean hands.”

One of the things that keeps me coming back to Michael Koryta, aside from his excellent prose, is his surprising characters. Never Far Away kept me guessing all the way through, mostly because one of the central characters was truly impossible to predict (and I can tell you, as a writer, that that’s a hard trick to pull off).

Leah Trenton is a successful, and highly skilled, Maine outdoor guide. But this is her second life. In the first one, she was a corporate pilot, working for a wealthy family reminiscent of the Kennedys, and a loving wife and mother. But one day she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. The only choice she had was to fake her own death and disappear, leaving her family behind forever. Regret gnaws at her to this day.

But now her husband is dead, and her children need her again. She hurries to collect them, in the personage of a fictional “Aunt Leah.” She then learns that her enemies are on her trail, and they are men she knows well, very ruthless and very good at what they do.

Leah, however, can face them on her own ground, far from cities and the internet. In addition to that, she has an ally she knows nothing about – one who may save her family, but possibly at the price of her life.

As I’ve mentioned before, I try to avoid stories with female protagonists, especially in action roles. I like to keep the violence directed at, and inflicted by, males. In Never Far Away, a male action character is introduced, which I appreciated, but my protective instincts were still pretty heavily engaged. This book, therefore, scored high in dramatic tension. And that is, of course, what thrillers are all about.

Recommended, with cautions for language and intense situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘If She Wakes,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

Abby had been on the fringes of the PI game only a few months, but already she understood what sustained the profession: people lied, and people were stupid.

I am, and have never concealed it, an unreconstructed male chauvinist. For this reason I avoid action novels with female protagonists – I don’t like to see women put in harm’s way.

In spite of that, I bought Michael Koryta’s If She Wakes, just because he’s such a fine writer, and I seem to have run through all his male protagonists for the present. And I can report that it’s a superior, intensely gripping novel.

Tara Beckley is a student at a New England college. She’s assigned to drive a visiting dignitary to his lecture, but he unaccountably insists on taking a detour. Then an auto accident happens. When Tara next awakens, she’s in a hospital, coming out of a coma. She sees, hears, and understands everything going on around her. But no one can tell, because she cannot move any part of her body. She’s “locked in.” To her horror, as she listens, her family discusses turning off her life support. Suddenly, her only hope is in her protective, gratifyingly stubborn older sister.

Abby Kaplan is a former race driver who transitioned to Hollywood stunt work. Life was great until one driving mistake left her movie star boyfriend dead. Now she’s phobic about driving. A friend got her a job as an insurance adjustor, and she’s assigned to examine Tara’s accident scene. But something’s wrong there. The driver’s account doesn’t match the evidence. She does not know that her assessment is very important to a particular group of people, people who will spare neither money nor human lives to get hold of a particular object, an object whose location only the paralyzed Tara Beckley knows.

If She Wakes was an extremely good thriller, full of twists and surprises; the kind of story where we fear for the protagonists even as we root for them to overcome their obstacles and grow as human beings. Well worth reading, with cautions for the usual things.

Fiction, Reviews

‘So Cold the River,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

Artifacts of their ambition. Only through study of those things could you truly understand people long departed…. The reality of someone’s heart lay in the objects of their desires. Whether those things were achieved did not matter nearly so much as what they had been.

Eric Shaw, hero of Michael Koryta’s So Cold the River, is a failure in life. That’s his view of himself, and he confirms it constantly by self-sabotaging. He was a rising cinematographer in Hollywood, until he lost his temper and made himself radioactive in the industry. Now he’s home in Chicago, subsisting through making memorial films for funerals. He recently succeeded in driving his wife away too.

A wealthy woman, impressed with one of his films, offers him a well-paying project. She’d like him to go down to Indiana to research the early life of her father-in-law’s father, a very rich man who was always secretive about his origins. It’s supposed to be a gift.

Eric goes down to the area of French Lick, Indiana, where he finds two towns, each with surprisingly lavish old hotels, relics of the 1920s, when the area was a popular location for spas. It was famous for its mineral water, which connects to the only artifact Eric’s client was able to offer him as a clue to the old man’s story – a bottle of cloudy water, bottled back in the glory days.

Eric makes one major mistake. As an experiment, he drinks some of the old water to treat a headache. First it makes him deadly sick. Then he starts seeing vivid visions of the past. Before long, Eric realizes the water is addictive – and he only has a limited supply.

Meanwhile, an elderly widow in the area is watching the sky. She’s been a weather tracker for many years, and she can tell a very unusual storm system is approaching.

I feel I’m doing a bad job describing how very well So Cold the River works. It reminded me (if I may be forgiven for the comparison) to my own novel, Wolf Time – though I fear Michael Koryta has done a better job here of constructing an epic urban fantasy/ghost story. (You can even find Christian themes if you like, though I’m not sure they’re intended. I was particularly impressed by the way the story treats one particular, unexpected hero.)

It’s a very cinematic story, and indeed it has been made into a movie – though (surprise, surprise) they gender-swapped most of the main characters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed So Cold the River very much. I recommend it highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Cypress House,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

She was that kind of beautiful. The crippling kind.

Probably later than any other fan, I’ve figured out that most (maybe all, for all I know) of Michael Koryta’s supernatural thrillers involve the same family. Arlen Wagner, hero of The Cypress House, seems to be the grandfather of Mark Novak, hero of the two books I previously reviewed.

Arlen grew up in West Virginia, and still carries the shame of having a crazy father who thought he could converse with the dead. Now he’s a veteran of World War I, and working for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He’s on a train with a group of other CCC men, headed to Florida to help construct a bridge to the Keys.

That’s when he has a vision of all his fellow passengers turning into skeletons. Arlen has had this experience before, during the war, and he knows it means they’ll die soon. He tries to persuade the men to leave the train, but they laugh at him. The only one who gets off with him is a young man named Paul Brickhill, a mechanical genius for whom Paul has conceived paternal sentiments. Left at loose ends, the two men get a ride to the Gulf Coast, so Paul can look at the ocean. There they find the Cypress House, a lonely boarding house near a dying town, overseen by a beautiful woman. They don’t plan on staying long, but a hurricane blows in (fulfilling, down in the Keys, Arlen’s grim prophecy about the CCC workers), and by the time it’s blown over, Paul has fallen in love with the landlady. Also, Arlen has noticed that something shady is going on at the Cypress House. He stays on to protect the boy.

A lot of protection will be called for, and Arlen will have to make peace with his father’s legacy before he can save the lives of the people he cares about.

The Cypress House is a compelling thriller. The tension ratchets up steadily, and the final showdown is as exciting and surprising as you’d expect from Koryta. In the tradition of Dean Koontz, Koryta’s story dabbles in the supernatural, but not in a way to greatly bother Christians.

My only quibble was that the Florida nights in this story seemed to be remarkably mosquito-free (though the mosquitoes finally showed up when they were needed to contribute to the dramatic tension).

The Cypress House was a superior thriller, verging on the epic. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Rise the Dark,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

The Billings airport was built on a plateau above the city, and while the mountains were far off in the hazy distance, the big sky was right there on top of you. The Montana sky felt older than time and endless as space itself.

It was a humbling sky.

Pushing on through the second book in Michael Koryta’s Mark Novak series. I was a little disappointed in the previous book, Last Words. Rise the Dark made up for that, and more. The claustrophobia of the first book contrasted with the open heights of the second (Rise the Dark is about mountains and power line towers), lending epic scope to the narrative as a whole.

Markus Novak now knows the name of the man who murdered his wife Lauren. His investigation takes him to the one place he needs to see, but always feared to visit – Cassadaga, Florida, a community founded on spiritualism. Raised by a fraudulent psychic mother, Marcus has always had a horror of psychic claims. But when he goes there, and nearly gets murdered in a burning house, he comes away with the last notation in Lauren’s notebook – the words, “rise the dark,” as well as  a clue as to where the murderer is headed – to a town in Montana where he lived a while as a boy, with his mother and his two outlaw uncles. On the way, he joins forces with a beautiful private detective.

Meanwhile, in Montana, a young wife is kidnapped by the leader of a doomsday cult. Her husband, a power line worker, is informed that if he wants his wife to live, he’ll have to help the cult carry out a major act of sabotage. What no one knows is that he’s lost his nerve. If he is to do this thing he does not want to do, he’ll have to go far beyond his personal limits.

Rise the Dark was an epic story, full of Michael Koryta’s trademark plot twists and surprises. It strays further into the occult than I like, but there’s an ambivalence about the topic that comforted me. It looks like more books are coming, and I look forward to reading them.

I found Rise the Dark highly compelling. Recommended, with the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Last Words,’ by Michael Koryta

1 Comment

…He had called on every resource for survival and found that your resources didn’t matter much when you were lost in the dark. You needed help from outside the blackness then. That had been the most unsettling realization of his life. I cannot save myself.

A while back I picked up a novella by Michael Koryta, my latest author enthusiasm. It was called The Last Honest Horse Thief, and told a story about Marcus Novak, a young boy living an itinerant life in the American mountain west. His mother, whom he loved but was ashamed of, was a fraudulent psychic and con woman. The story told how he got a chance at a different life, but chose to go back to her, honoring what he felt to be his responsibility. Like all Koryta stories, it didn’t go where I expected it to, but was satisfying in its own way.

On picking up Last Words, the first book in a series, I discovered that the novella had been a prequel, and that Marcus Novak is the hero here. He’s grown up now, having happily fled the mountains that carried so many bad memories. Now he lives the good life in Florida, as an investigator for a nonprofit foundation that investigates wrongful death penalty convictions. Or rather, it was the good life, until his wife was murdered. Since then he’s been obsessed with discovering her killer – so that he’s close to losing his job.

To get him out of the board of directors’ sight, Marcus’ boss sends him to Indiana, to investigate a case that doesn’t even match their organizational criteria. Ten years ago, a teenaged girl was lost in a cave. An eccentric local spelunker brought her dead body out, claiming he’d lost any memory of finding her. Public opinion agrees that this man must have murdered her, but there’s no evidence, and he’s never been charged or convicted. He is, in fact, the one who asked the foundation to send an investigator, to settle the truth once and for all.

Marcus has no interest in going to Indiana, and doesn’t care about the case. The secret lies in the cave, and he doesn’t like caves. The secret also involves a hypnotist, and he doesn’t trust hypnotists. Still, he will get drawn into it, and dark truths will be revealed.

I’m afraid I was a little disappointed in Last Words. The writing, as always with Koryta, was good. But I found the hero kind of passive. He got drawn into things against his will, and although he was tested in a major way, I wasn’t sure what he learned from it. But the big thing was that I wasn’t greatly surprised by the solution. I expect more surprises from Michael Koryta.

Also, there’s a lot of hypnotism in the story. I’m skeptical of hypnotism myself (someone tried to put me under once, but I’m a bad subject), and I thought the claims here were implausible.

But I’ll stay with the series. Last Words was all right, just not the author’s best work. In my opinion.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Ridge,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

At this point I’ll just cop to it – I’ve become a Michael Koryta junkie. I’m plowing through his books, one after the other, and when I run out I’ll probably have to check myself into a rehab center somewhere.

The Ridge is not my favorite of his books, but it kept me biting my nails. And Koryta’s great trademark – the head-fake, the illusionist’s trick of diverting the audience’s attention so they can be astonished when the rabbit (or, in this case, the cougar) emerges from the hat – is there in abundance. The wonderful thing about this artistic technique is that it increases verisimilitude (life is full of surprises like that) and offers plenty of opportunities for deeper, more complex characterization.

In the hills of eastern Kentucky an idealistic young couple has established a sanctuary for exotic cats. They are full of hopes and love for the animals, but they dislike their closest neighbor, a crazy old man who has built an actual lighthouse nearby, and keeps telling them this is a bad place for them to set up.

The same old man has been warning Deputy Sheriff Kevin Kimble about some weird danger that he can’t define. Kimble pays the old drunk little attention, but when the old hermit suddenly kills himself, Kimble finds a number of mysterious newspaper articles and photographs tacked up in his house. They all relate to accidents and murders that happened at , or to people who’d been at, the ridge. As he investigates, Kimble grows increasingly convinced that there is evil at work up there, and it’s his job to figure out how to fight forces not of this world.

The Ridge was a pretty complex story – perhaps a little too complex. It must have been a challenge to plot. But all the thrills were earned, and the the ending was dramatically satisfying. Think Dean Koontz, if you’re looking for a comparison.

Recommended. Cautions for grownup stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Prophet,’ by Michael Koryta

3 Comments

There is no God.

You walk alone in the darkness.

To prove this, to imprint it in the mind so deeply that no alternative can so much as flicker, is the goal. This is power, pure as it comes….

The prophet’s goal is simple. When the final scream in the night comes, whoever issues it will be certain of one thing.

No one hears.

Reading fiction is an activity entailing many pleasures; among them is the constant possibility of discovering a truly wonderful book. I had that pleasure – in a big way – in reading Michael Koryta’s The Prophet. It’s a book that has a lot to do with football, and it hit me with the impact of a linebacker.

In 1989, brothers Adam and Kent Austin of Chalmers, Ohio were both on a winning high school football team in that football-obsessed part of the country. But Adam made a mistake on the night of their greatest victory, a mistake that destroyed their family. Today, Adam is a bail bondsman, still living in Chalmers, in the old family house. His brother Kent is the local football coach, a much-respected figure. He’s a devout Christian, and regularly leads Bible studies in a nearby prison.

The brothers almost never speak to one another.

When Adam now makes a second mistake, resulting in a young girl’s death, he is overwhelmed with guilt. He makes a promise to the girl’s mother – he will find the murderer, and he will not turn him over to the police. He will kill him.

Adam has no intention of letting this ugly business slop over into his brother’s life – but it does. It turns out that Kent was part of the plan from the beginning – innocently and unintentionally, but he and his family will be drawn inexorably into a drama scripted by the killer.

In a separate plot thread, we follow the progress of Kent’s high school football team, as they surmount one obstacle after another (not least survivor’s grief) to pursue a championship they’ve never won before. This theme provides a sort of harmonic counterpoint to the main plot, revealing character and illuminating the narrative.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel that impressed me as The Prophet did. (And I’m not even interested in football). In addition, the book surprised me though describing the struggles of a sincere, decent Christian – not in an evangelistic way, but honestly and with sympathy. This is something you don’t see often in mainstream literature.

I could go on and on. Drop whatever you’re doing and buy The Prophet. You’ll thank me.

Cautions for adult stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Those Who Wish Me Dead,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

You’ve got to observe the world you’re in to understand what parts of it may save you. At first, it may all seem hostile. The whole environment may seem like an enemy. But it isn’t. There are things hiding in it waiting to save you, and it’s your job to see them.

I keep saying I’m cutting back on reading thrillers, but then I get sucked in by good authors like Michael Koryta. And wowee, what a ride Those Who Wish Me Dead (which has since been made into a film with Angelina Jolie) was.

Jace Wilson did nothing wrong. The boy was in the wrong place in the wrong time, and he witnessed a murder. The two murderers didn’t catch him at the time, but now they know about him, and they want him dead. His parents decided, for his safety, to send him to Montana, to Ethan Serbin, who runs a sort of bootcamp program for troubled boys. The program involves camping up in the mountains, far off the grid. He ought to be safe there.

But no one is safe from men smart enough, and wicked enough, to figure out who to torture and what questions to ask them. Before long Jace will be alone in the wilderness, armed with just a little survival training, the prey in a seemingly hopeless game. Only he’s not quite alone. Outside his awareness, people who care are going to do more than anyone should ever be asked to do, to save his life – and perhaps their own souls.

I might not have read Those Who Wish Me Dead had I been aware that it involved two elements that particularly trouble me in stories – danger to children and danger to women. But I persevered, and got my reward in the end. Koryta is a master plotter, and he pulls all the tricks here – each new level achieved turns into a deadfall; there are traps within traps. Heart in your mouth stuff.

Highly recommended, but intense. Cautions for language, violence, and torture.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Envy the Night,’ by Michael Koryta

Leave a comment

“Thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Frank said, “You know what he does. You know what he is. So how the h*ll do you love him so clean?”

“Hon,” she said, “whoever said anything about it being clean?”

Frank Temple III, hero of Envy the Night, by Michael Koryta, is the son of a former hero, a decorated US marshal who disgraced himself and his family when he was revealed to have become a killer-for-hire. He killed himself, leaving his son – who had adored him, and whom he had trained in the martial arts – disillusioned and rootless in the world.

Frank III kept possession of the cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin that held some of his favorite memories of his dad, though he never visits. His father’s old friend Ezra also maintains the nearby island cabin belonging to Devin Matteson, the colleague who corrupted and betrayed Frank’s father. They left Devin alone, but they have an agreement – if Devin ever tries to come back, they’ll kill him.

Now Frank has gotten the word – Devin is on his way. So Frank is headed to Wisconsin, to a showdown with Devin, and with the truth of his father’s life and death, and to his own destiny.

You want to learn how to write mystery thrillers? Read Michael Koryta. Reading Envy the Night, I marveled at the way every story element – prose, characters, dialogue, plot – all worked together to produce a perfect payoff. I find no fault with this book (except for Koryta’s idiosyncratic approach to paragraphing, which seems to be a lost cause).

Highly recommended.