If She Wakes

March 11, 2019
At the start of this taut thriller from bestseller Koryta (How It Happened), the car in which Tara Beckley, a student at Maine’s Hammel College, was driving Professor Amandi Oltamu before they parked on a bridge is struck by a car driven by Carlos Ramirez. Oltamu, who was on his way to deliver the keynote address at a talk related to his work on batteries and solar panels, is killed, and Tara ends up paralyzed, conscious but unable to communicate. Insurance investigator Abby Kaplan, who’s employed by Hammel, probes the fatal collision. Why Tara chose to stop on a bridge nowhere near her destination is a puzzle. College officials are hoping to avoid any liability for Oltamu’s death and Tara’s injuries, a prospect that seems likely when Ramirez admits to having been on his cellphone at the time of the accident. But when Ramirez is shot to death, Abby begins to suspect that something more sinister is at work than distracted driving, and that Tara may have some answers. Adept at creating Hitchcockian moments, Koryta keeps the suspense high throughout. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

There's something creepy about the voice that narrator Robert Petkoff has chosen for Dax, this thriller's young villain. Sounding a little like Tony Perkins in PSYCHO, Dax, a contract killer, radiates a sociopathic nonchalance that--thanks to Petkoff's articulation--is almost likable. If only he weren't trying to kill the novel's protagonists, Abby, a disgraced stunt driver reduced to insurance investigator, and Tara, a hospitalized college student in a non-communicative state of paralysis known as "locked-in syndrome." These women prove to be resourceful, tenacious, and, in Abby's case, hell on wheels. Author Michael Koryta hits the thriller buttons--women in jeopardy, twisted killer, protagonists with physical and emotional handicaps--and Petkoff narrates it all in stride, bringing particular excitement to the stunt driving sequences. R.W.S. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine