“All of these names…could be linked by two factors: death and proximity to Blade Ridge. The manner of death, though, those tales of trestle falls and stampeding horses and electrocutions, turned any legitimate concern about the road’s safety into a bizarre raving about…what? Some sort of cursed ground? A karmic disaster zone?”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JUN 10, 2011)

Michael Koryta scores again with The Ridge, a thriller set in an isolated and rugged area of Eastern Kentucky. Inexplicable events are happening near a hilltop known as Blade Ridge. Sawyer County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Kimble and his colleagues get involved after an eccentric old drunk named Wyatt French is found dead in his lighthouse, an apparent suicide. No one understands why French spent time and money building a wooden lighthouse “in the middle of nowhere.” French had his reasons, but what he knew was so bizarre that no sane person would ever believe him.

Sheriff Kevin Kimble, who patrols Whitman and its environs, has a history of his own. While trying to protect a woman named Jacqueline Mathis from her abusive husband, Kimble was shot in the back. He still has lingering pain and stiffness, but knows he was lucky to survive. Meanwhile, a widow named Audrey Clark is carrying on the work of her late husband, David, a wildlife preservationist. She, along with a small paid staff and volunteers, has relocated sixty-seven exotic big cats (tigers, cougars, lions, and leopards who had suffered mistreatment at the hands of their owners) to a rescue center near Blade Ridge Road. Among the animals is Ira, a beautiful and unique black cougar who is crafty, powerful, and deadly when angered. Observing the goings-on is sixty-year old Roy Darmus, a veteran reporter whose newspaper has folded. Roy is extremely curious about strange episodes of violence that have marred the tranquility of his town. When he starts digging into Whitman’s history, he makes some astounding discoveries.

Koryta has created a richly delineated cast of characters who face extraordinary challenges and grave danger. The gripping plot is chilling and eerily suspenseful. Michael Koryta is a consummate craftsman whose expressive dialogue, evocative descriptive writing, and atmospheric story draw us into his menacing world. Some readers may hesitate to turn the pages, fearing that terrible things are about happen. Still, they will be riveted by this intense story and will continue reading until they finally learn the ghastly secret of The Ridge.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 46 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (June 8, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Koryta
EXTRAS:	Excerpt (see widget)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Cypress House Also check out: Captivity by Deborah Lee Wesselmann

Bibliography:

• Envy the Night (2008)
• So Cold the River (2010)
• The Cypress House (2011)
• The Ridge (2011)
• The Prophet (August 2012)

Lincoln Perry series:

• Tonight I Said Goodbye (2004)
• Sorrow’s Anthem (2006)
• A Welcome Grave (2007)
• The Silent Hour (2009)

“This was a dangerous game. Wasn’t as simple as talking. There was more to it than that, and what Tolliver had said had been the truth – the dead weren’t required to help him.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (JAN 24, 2011)

In Koryta’s latest thriller – noir with a twist of the supernatural – it’s late summer 1935 and a group of hard-bitten WWI veterans and one talented 19-year-old are headed for the Florida Keys to build a highway bridge.

“They’d been on the train for five hours before Arlen Wagner saw the first of the dead men.” Wagner, a loner who’s taken the kid, Paul Brickhill, under his wing, developed a chilling battlefield talent during the war. He could look at living men and see death steal over them. “He could see skulls shining in the pale moonlight where faces belonged, hands of white bone clutching rifle stocks.”

He found he could save some too, change the course of their fate. Not all, not even many; but some. So when he looks around and sees that every last man on the train, including young Paul, is about to die, he tries to convince them to get off at the next stop. But it’s the middle of nowhere in backwoods Florida and these hungry men aren’t about to fall for some superstitious claptrap. He and Paul, a budding and natural engineer, are the only ones who stay behind and as they head out into the dark, “the summer night pressed down on them like a pair of strong hands, made each step feel like ten.”

They finally end up at an oddly deserted fishing resort – The Cypress House – presided over by a woman, Rebecca Cady, who could have stepped right out of a James M. Cain novel: “Beautiful, yes. The sort of gorgeous that haunted men, chased them over oceans and never left their minds, not even when they wanted a respite. But was she trustworthy? No. Arlen was sure of that.”

Paul, however, is smitten and even after a punishing run-in with the corrupt local sheriff, he’s determined to stick around and use his skills to make her life easier. His determination only grows after a powerful hurricane takes out the Cypress House generator as well as its boathouse and dock.

“The three of them went out onto the front porch once, with the building offering shelter between them and the wind, and took in the yard. Everything was awash with water, the sea moving all around them, as if they stood aboard a ship rather than a porch.”

This is the 1935 hurricane that destroyed the Florida Keys railroad, killed hundreds and put paid to any notion of building a Keys highway for many years to come. Wagner’s death vision has been fulfilled – all the men who were on the train were killed in the hurricane. And Wagner is becoming increasingly sure that the longer they stay at The Cypress House, the more they tempt the same fate, even as he finds his eyes – and thoughts – lingering longer on Rebecca Cady. The men who run things in this corrupt little backwater make their own law, and their hold over Cady is as absolute as it is mysterious. To save Paul, Wagner has some hard choices ahead.

Koryta keeps his dialog hard-edged. The noir atmosphere drips with steamy Gulf Coast humidity, and crackles with human chemistry. The supernatural element heightens the eerie feel while the story’s foundations go deep into the real hopelessness of the Depression. Sentence by sentence the prose draws the reader into the story but it all sags a bit in the middle. One of the strengths of classic noir is brevity, and that’s just not possible these days. People like their thrillers long and a certain amount of padding is all but inevitable it seems.

Nevertheless, Koryta builds to a tense, violent climax that makes full use of the swampy Florida setting and its backwoods denizens, as well as all of Wagner’s ingenuity and spooky sense.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 75 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (January 24, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Koryta
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Ridge More hurricane based fiction: The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Masitros And another novel with that eerie supernatural feel: Isabella by Laura Benedict

Bibliography:

• Envy the Night (2008)
• So Cold the River (2010)
• The Cypress House (2011)
• The Ridge (2011)
• The Prophet (August 2012)

Lincoln Perry series:

• Tonight I Said Goodbye (2004)
• Sorrow’s Anthem (2006)
• A Welcome Grave (2007)
• The Silent Hour (2009)