Rise the Dark

June 6, 2016
Two main narrative strands propel bestseller Koryta’s pulse-pounding sequel to 2015’s Last Words. When the electricity fails one snowy night, Jay Baldwin, a power-company foreman, leaves his Red Lodge, Mont., home to investigate. He later phones his wife, Sabrina, to report that someone has cut trees so that they have fallen onto power lines. Back at the house, Sabrina is confronted by an armed intruder, Garland Webb, who takes her hostage for an unknown reason. Webb, who was just released from prison for sexual assault, is the quarry of PI Markus Novak, who suspects Webb of murdering the detective’s wife, Lauren, in Cassadaga, Fla. Before Webb left prison, he arranged for a fellow prisoner to call Markus and taunt him—which only strengthens the widower’s resolve to bring Webb to justice and to figure out a cryptic phrase, “Rise the dark,” which Lauren wrote in a notebook right before her death. The villains may be cartoonish, but the dramatic conclusion does justice to the suspenseful setups. Author tour. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from June 15, 2016
Having escaped certain death in Indiana's scariest caves in Last Words (2015), private investigator Mark Novak returns to his old haunts in Montana in pursuit of the man who murdered his wife in Cassadaga, Florida--a strange town known for its psychics.The suspected killer, Garland Webb, released from a sexual-assault prison sentence on technicalities, has joined a crackpot cult in Montana bent on bringing down the electrical grid--and blaming it on Islamic terrorists. The group, which has a misguided reverence for alternating-current legend Nikola Tesla, includes Novak's long-estranged mother, Violet, a psychic reader who claims she has Native American blood. Arriving in the mountains, where other members of his loopy, boozing, troublemaking family live, Novak encounters Jay Baldwin, a former lineman whose wife, Sabrina, has been abducted by the messianic villain Eli Pate, the cult's leader. Pate threatens to kill her unless Jay takes apart selected high-voltage lines--a dangerous task made more frightening by Jay's memory of his brother and fellow lineman getting electrocuted on such a climb. After a female Pinkerton agent Novak is working with is captured and chained to the wall next to Sabrina, the PI turns for help to his Uncle Larry, Violet's shotgun-bearing brother. Like most of the characters, Larry is a lot more interesting than the flatly affected Novak. But as with his spellbinding 2014 effort, Those Who Wish Me Dead, Koryta employs the desolate Montana setting with such mastery and deep sense of mystery that it's a compelling character itself. And with an intriguing coda that reverberates with themes of family, myth, and psychic possibility, this new novel leaves us keenly anticipating the next installment of the Novak saga. Again proving himself one of today's top thriller writers, Koryta creates edgy suspense not with trickery but with characters who test the limits of their courage.

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June 1, 2016
Markus Novak lost his wife when Garland Webb killed her and left her body in a ditch in Cassadaga, Florida. Novak is on the hunt, his only clue being his wife's last entry in her journal, the mysterious phrase, rise the dark. Across the country in Montana, a high-voltage lineman is accidentally killed while his best friend, Jay, is just a few feet away. Jay and his best friend's sister, Sabrina, move away, ostensibly to keep Jay safe and on the ground. When the power goes out, he goes back to work, only to find that Sabrina has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, a beautiful young woman is traveling the country on her way to Montana, leaving a trail of dead bodies in her wake. These disparate plot elements eventually come together in a frightening thriller about the holes in our infrastructure and the security protecting it. In this second Markus Novak novel, following 2015's Last Words, Koryta effectively combines a compelling premise, a villain who seems too smart to be stopped, and a revealing look at the hero's dysfunctional family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2016

"Rise the dark" are the mysterious last words Lauren Novak wrote in her notebook before she was shot to death beneath a Spanish moss-draped cypress tree in a remote Florida town. Her husband, investigator Markus Novak, wants a showdown with the man he thinks responsible for her death--the very man who has just abducted Sabrina Baldwin in far-off Montana, even as a terrible act of vandalism threatens the state's electrical grid. From a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016

When former private investigator Markus Novak, introduced in Last Words, learns that Garland Webb, the man who confessed to murdering his wife, was released from prison, his new purpose in life is to find and kill Webb. He starts in the small Florida town where his wife died; strange events and a violent encounter there lead him to Montana. Meanwhile, Webb, now in the employ of a mysterious man named Eli Pate, has kidnapped the wife of a high-voltage line worker so that her husband, Jay, will be compelled to help complete Pate's scheme of destroying Montana's electrical grid. Markus finds much more than he expects upon arrival in Big Sky country, and danger is more palpable than ever. Following his traditional format of short, fast-paced chapters, a compelling narrative, relatable characters, and action scenes that play out like a blockbuster film, Koryta has written his best book to date. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of the author and readers of Dan Brown and Dennis Lehane. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]--Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2016

When former private investigator Markus Novak, introduced in Last Words, learns that Garland Webb, the man who confessed to murdering his wife, was released from prison, his new purpose in life is to find and kill Webb. He starts in the small Florida town where his wife died; strange events and a violent encounter there lead him to Montana. Meanwhile, Webb, now in the employ of a mysterious man named Eli Pate, has kidnapped the wife of a high-voltage line worker so that her husband, Jay, will be compelled to help complete Pate's scheme of destroying Montana's electrical grid. Markus finds much more than he expects upon arrival in Big Sky country, and danger is more palpable than ever. Following his traditional format of short, fast-paced chapters, a compelling narrative, relatable characters, and action scenes that play out like a blockbuster film, Koryta has written his best book to date. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of the author and readers of Dan Brown and Dennis Lehane. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]--Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.