Michael Koryta

It's been seven years since Frank Temple learned of his father's double life as a contract killer. But when he learns that the man who lured his father into the killing game, only to later give him up to the FBI, is returning to the isolated Wisconsin lake that was once sacred ground for their families, it's a homecoming Frank can't allow ...Devin Matteson - evil man for sure - was alive and free. Cut a deal, hung Frank's father out to dry, and then walked away. No punishment, no penance, no pain. He deserved some or all of that. He damn sure deserved some pain.Envy the Night blasts into the life of Frank Temple. Frank's father was a hitman, and though Frank turned his back on his father's violent ways, he's never been able to get over his father's suicide after being turned in to the authorities by someone close to him.So when Frank learns that Devin Matteson - the man he believes betrayed his father - is heading to a lake in Wisconsin, he finds himself drawn back to the lake to confront Matteson in a final showdown ...With its excellent narrative and superb plot, Envy the Night confirms Michael Koryta's place among the top echelon of international crime writers. A moody and evocative novel, with overtones of both Michael Connelly and James Lee-Burke, it will keep you turning its pages well into the night.

"Rise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Markus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her, Gardland Webb, is out of prison and draws Markus to the scene he's avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a place called Cassadaga. In Red Lodge, Montana, a senseless act of vandalism shuts the lights off in the town where Sabrina Baldwin is still trying to adjust to a new home and mourning the loss of her brother, who was a high-voltage linesman just like her husband, Jay. As the spring's final snowstorm calls Jay deeper into the mountains, chasing the destruction to the electrical grid, Sabrina is abducted by Garland Webb, Lauren's purported killer. Drawing them all together is a messianic killer who understands that you can never outpace your past. You can only rise against the future"--Jacket.

In this haunting, cleverly constructed, brilliantly plotted debut novel, private investigators Lincoln Perry and his partner Joe Pritchard are hired to find the wife and child of a man found dead in an upscale Cleveland suburb-was it suicide, or was it murder?Crusty old John Weston hires partners Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard to investigate both the death of his son, Wayne, and the disappearance of Wayne's wife and young daughter. Perry and Pritchard soon determine that Wayne-a PI like themselves-was doing surveillance jobs for Jeremiah Hubbard-'Cleveland's answer to Donald Trump'-that brought him into contact with Russian mobsters.The case heats up considerably when the detectives locate a Marine buddy of Wayne's, only for him to be shot by a sniper, dying in front of them. The action quickly shifts to South Carolina, as Perry follows a lead in his search for Wayne's daughter and wife.When Lincoln finds Julie Weston, she shows him a videotape her husband made of the Russian mobsters committing a murder, and soon they're both in danger when the very same mobsters come looking for the tape...

For years, a lighthouse at the top of a hill called Blade Ridge has lit up the surrounding woods. But when the lighthouse keeper is found dead, strange things begin happening to the people and animals in the area.

Private investigator Lincoln Perry returns in an investigation that takes him from blue-collar bars to the offices of city officials, on a mission to understand why his old friend was killed in a brutal confrontation with the Cleveland police.Cleveland PI and former police officer Lincoln Perry has always been passionate about his work. But professional devotion becomes obsession when his childhood friend, Ed Gradduk, is accused of killing a woman then setting fire to the house where her body was found.Still haunted by the circumstances that led to his estrangement from Gradduk, Perry is determined to get to the truth. But Gradduk is murdered before Perry gets anywhere. With the help of his partner, retired cop Joe Pritchard, Perry combs his old neighbourhood for answers, following a winding trail of dirty cops and suspicious fires toward the truth.Michael Koryta's plot percolates with crisp dialogue that would impress Chandler himself. He demonstrates a gift for creating both sympathetic characters and a fast-moving, twisty plot.

A convicted murderer asks Lincoln Perry to find the missing daughter of a Mafia Don in the fourth installment of the award-winning PI series - a dark tale of broken dreams and second chances.Whisper Ridge - Home to Dreams - 6 November 1992-27 April 1996So reads the strange epitaph carved beside the front door of Whisper Ridge, a multi-million-dollar mansion that once housed the beginnings of Alexandra Sanabria's unique program for parolled murderers. Uninhabited for twelve years, the home still stands as a strange monument to dangerous secrets.Private investigator Lincoln Perry's first involvement with the house and its legacy comes when Parker Harrison - a convicted killer and former parolee at Whisper Ridge - asks him to find Alexandra, who disappeared with her husband after the failure of the parolee program.Against his better judgment, Perry agrees to take on the case. When he learns that the skeletal remains of Alexandra's husband have been found, he wishes he'd trusted his initial instincts ...With the police investigation reactivated and decades-old threats arising, Perry is confronted with a sordid family mystery that will challenge both his abilities as a detective and his commitment to that calling ...

"When 13-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he's plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare. The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains. The clock is ticking, the mountains are burning, and those who wish Jace Wilson dead are no longer far behind" --

It started with a beautiful woman and a challenge. As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past--just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life. In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history--a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored--a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.

When Arlen Wagner awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he tries to warn them. Only 19-year-old Paul Brickhill believes him, and the two abandon the train, hoping to escape certain death. They continue south, but are soon stranded at the Cypress House--an isolated Gulf Coast boarding house run by the beautiful Rebecca Cady--directly in the path of an approaching hurricane. But the storm isn't the only approaching danger.

Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives. So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story. Not Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood. He's been circling Kimberly and her conspirators for months, waiting for the right avenue to the truth, and has finally found it. He knows, as strongly as he's known anything, that Kimberly's story--a grisly, harrowing story of a hit and run fueled by dope and cheap beer that becomes a brutal stabbing in cold blood--is how it happened. But one thing remains elusive: where are Jackie and Ian's bodies? After Barrett stakes his name and reputation on the truth of Kimberly's confession, only to have the bodies turn up 200 miles from where she said they'd be, shot in the back and covered in a different suspect's DNA, the case is quickly closed and Barrett forcibly reassigned. But for Howard Pelletier, the tragedy of his daughter's murder cannot be so tidily swept away. And for Barrett, whose career may already be over, the chance to help a grieving father may be the only one he has left.--book jacket.