The Ridge

Starred review from April 25, 2011
A rural Kentucky community becomes the unlikely focal point for a series of enigmatic and terrifying events in Koryta's subtle supernatural thriller. When local drunk Wyatt French, who inexplicably built a wooden lighthouse far from any large body of water, calls Kevin Kimble, the county's chief deputy, and asks whether he'd investigate a suicide, Kimble, who's driving in his car to visit a prison inmate, refers French to a suicide hotline. Soon after, reporter Roy Darmus, whose newspaper has just folded, receives an unsettling call from French that prompts Darmus to go to the lighthouse, where he finds the man has apparently shot himself in the mouth. French's death may be connected with an eerie blue light seen in the vicinity of Blade Ridge, a phenomenon that riles the big cats residing in a wildlife refuge that's just set up shop on property adjoining French's. Koryta (The Cypress House) matches an original and complex plot line with prose full of understated menace.

June 1, 2011

The choice is simple: Kill or be killed.

Wyatt French blasted himself to smithereens with his shotgun. But before he died, he contacted Kimble, a Shipley, Ky., sheriff, and Darmus, a reporter for the Sawyer County Sentinel, and asked them to consider whether he really committed suicide. A strange request, perhaps, but Wyatt was a strange man, who for unspecified reasons built a lighthouse miles away from the sea and even equipped it with ultraviolet beams when his new neighbors at the big-cat rescue center complained that its light upset their animals. In the course of investigating Wyatt's lair, lights unfortunately get broken and strange things begin to happen. A black puma escapes the compound, a keeper is mauled, a deputy magically gets up and walks away when his car is totaled and an eerie blue glow bobbles through the woods. Even stranger, Wyatt seems to have plastered the walls of the lighthouse with pictures of murderers and accident victims, some dating back to the 1880s, when 16 men died constructing the Whitman trestle nearby. At length, Kimble and Darmus realize their pasts also include fateful accidents that occurred near the trestle. Meanwhile, the big cats grow more restless and the blue light appears more often. The final confrontation will cause Kimble to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Koryta (The Cypress House, 2011, etc.), whose affection for the big cats and those who care for them is contagious, has produced a supernatural thriller that will raise goosebumps the size of golf balls.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

Like most folks, local reporter Roy Darmus is amused by the lighthouse standing on a ridge in the Kentucky woods, far from water. Then he receives a suicide note from its architect and enters the odd structure, where he finds names of the dead inscribed on the walls (including those of his parents). This is a bizarrely enticing setup, and since the author is the award-winning and sharp-eyed Koryta, expect good follow-through. For all thriller collections.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2011
In Blade Ridge, Kentucky, a man named Wyatt, notorious for his alcohol consumption and troubled past, makes two phone callsone to Kevin Kimble, a police officer, and the other to Roy Darmus, a newspaper reporterduring which he rambles on about murder and suicide. Soon after, hes discovered dead in his home, an old lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, and police find that the place is awash in curious, unsettling remnants of the dead mans life. Most curious are the photographs stuck to the walls, many of them quite old, and the maps with names written on them in red ink. When Darmus discovers one of the photos is of his long-dead parents, and Kimble is forced to confront the possibility that an incident from his own past might not be a secret anymore, they begin to wonder what tragic local history Wyatt had tapped intoand whether the horror is just beginning. Koryta, whos been a newspaper reporter and a private investigator, gets deep inside the minds of his protagonists, and the story is intriguing and frequently spooky. Its a good book, effectively blending crime and horror, although an author like Graham Masterton might have given the horror side a bit more oomph. Still, this one will definitely cross over to fans of both genres. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Korytas crime-horror genre-benders, beginning with So Cold the River (2010), have secured the author of the Lincoln Perry PI novels a new and larger audience. Expect the trend to continue here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)