{"id":20961,"date":"2025-07-30T19:44:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20961"},"modified":"2025-07-30T19:44:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:44:13","slug":"the-silent-hour-by-michael-koryta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20961","title":{"rendered":"‘The Silent Hour,’ by Michael Koryta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve got to live with that,\u201d he said, \u201cand all I can do, the only way I know to cope with it, is by looking for atonement. Because while his blood might be on my hands, I didn\u2019t kill him\u2014and if I can see that whoever did kill him is punished? Perry, that\u2019s the closest thing I\u2019ve got to redemption.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Lincoln Perry detective series<\/strong> by Michael Koryta comes to an end with The Silent Hour<\/a><\/em> \u2013 though the conclusion is open-ended, and I imagine there could be more coming down the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The great pleasure in these books, I think, is the plotting \u2013 these are the kinds of stories where you think you have the solutions, and then further mysteries open up, like petals in a flower, till you finally reach the shocking heart of things. In this case \u2013 and I may be being pretentious here \u2013 I thought I saw the same thing going on, on a subtextual level, making this a meta-mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lincoln Perry has had a rough time in his most recent big cases. He got his partner shot and nearly killed. He got his girlfriend into danger. He isn\u2019t much interested when a quiet man named Parker Harrison comes to him \u2013 repeatedly \u2013 asking him to look into a twelve-year-old mystery. A couple named Cantrell had run a rehabilitation program for ex-convicts \u2013 one of whom was Harrison himself. Twelve years ago they disappeared. Harrison wants to find out what happened to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lincoln isn\u2019t much interested in the case \u2013 even less so when he learns that the missing wife was sister to one of Cleveland\u2019s chief crime lords. But Harrison gets through to him at last. He agrees to look into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before too long, someone Lincoln likes is dead. Lincoln goes sour, not only on the case, but on the very idea of being a private investigator. Should he just pack it in? Is the game worth the candle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is an existential one \u2013 why do we feel the need to solve mysteries? To learn the truth? At what cost? Is it worth people\u2019s lives?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish there were more Lincoln Perry novels to read after The Silent Hour<\/em>. As it is, I\u2019ll go on to other Michael Koryta novels, as well as his Scott Carson books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish he\u2019d work out his paragraph protocols, though. The breaks in the text are unnecessarily confusing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got to live with that,\u201d he said, \u201cand all I can do, the only way I know to cope with it, is by looking for atonement. Because while his blood might be on my hands, I didn\u2019t kill him\u2014and if I can see that whoever did kill him is punished? Perry, that\u2019s the closest … Continue reading ‘The Silent Hour,’ by Michael Koryta<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5641,5614,5648],"class_list":["post-20961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-lincoln-perry","tag-michael-koryta","tag-the-silent-hour"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20964,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961\/revisions\/20964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}