Michael Koryta: The Ridge

Recently read: Michael Koryta's horror novel The Ridge. I'd read earlier one of Koryta's PI novels featuring Lincoln Perry and liked it a great deal (read the review here) and I grabbed this from the book store's sale. The Ridge is an entertaining horror novel with an interesting and an original premise - at least I haven't seen it used much. And there are some interesting locations, such as a shelter for big felines and a lighthouse nowhere near the sea. As in Koryta's PI novels, the mystery is rooted in the old times, where things were crueler than they are now. There's some truly fascinating stuff behind the lighthouse an old man has built for himself.

Koryta also writes in a clear and easy prose that's not overtly sentimental. There's an edge of noiriness in his words sentencens. The Ridge comes off as a quiet novel about the futile efforts of man. His people and the ending of the book are sad, as befits the horror genre.  

Michael Koryta's A Welcome Grave

You might remember I lost this book for at least a week and my reading experience was a bit ruffled by the incident, but it was still a very good book, a good example of the recent private eye fiction that doesn't have any of the noirish clichés of the private eye fiction that still marr the image of the hardboiled gumshoe in people's eyes. Very few of these books have been translated in Finnish, which means many have the wrong image of the new PI novels.

Okay, to the book. The setting is very intriguing and fresh: someone kills brutally the guy who "stole" Lincoln Perry's (Perry being Koryta's PI hero) girlfriend many years ago and married her. Lincoln Perry is the first suspect, since he's known to have  fought with the deceased. The wife knows the dead man had a son and someone should notify him about the death of his father. Perry finds the son quite easily, but in the middle of the night, in a gazebo somewhere, the son pulls the trigger and kills himself.

And then I lost the book.

And then I found it. (Or actually Elina, my wife, found it while cleaning.)

But I got back on the track. A Welcome Grave is one of those touching and tragic PI novels in the mould of Ross Macdonald or Jonathan Valin. The webs of history and family life are very complex in this book. At times I felt there was a bit too much dwelling on Perry's love life and he has a mildly weird sidekick (a trait I don't really like in new PI fiction), but I'm not really complaining. The climax is quite shattering and full of action. This would make a nice film. My only complaint is that Lincoln Perry is not as memorable characther as someone like Philip Marlowe or Dan Fortune. Maybe that's the point: the people around the PI are the story.

Oh, here's Koryta's website.

Where's my Michael Koryta?

I ordered some books recently from the web. One of them was A Welcome Grave by Michael Koryta about whom I've read good things. The book is one of his Lincoln Perry PI novels. I thought it was good - at least the first hundred pages. The premise was very interesting: Perry is asked by her former girlfriend to locate the lost son of her husband, who's recently been brutally slaughtered. Perry finds the guy, but then something weird happens.

Then I lost the book. I don't know where it is. I can't find it anywhere at our place. I've asked all the libraries and shops if they've seen it.

I guess I'll have to order a new copy.