Michael Koryta

It’s been sometime since I read a Michael Koryta novel so when this one fell into my hands, I was more than ready to resume my acquaintance with this author that I have always enjoyed. From the beginning you see that what you are reading is a story that is so well done that it seems like the small Maine town itself should be one of the characters. If you like working out the “bad guy” and solving the mystery by having the facts fed to you a few at a time...you will love this one. I show more will admit that it did take off a bit on the slow side...that is what lost it a 5 star rating for me. Also despite having all the clues...I did figure it out but not until almost the end...which was both chilling as well as action packed. show less

Never Far Away' was an entertaining read that kept surprising me but sometimes in a way that left me a little frustrated at the path chosen.

The thing I enjoyed most about the book was that the two main characters were slightly off-centre. They were believable but unpredictable. The only thing they had in common was that they were both dangerous.

Firstly, there's Nina Morgan, now known as Leah Trenton. She's not the normal surprisingly-competent-mom-in-peril that thriller writers love. She is show more competent: a qualified Maine Guide at home in the wilderness, a licensed pilot and a good shot, but she's mainly a woman so deeply enmeshed in lies that she no longer knows how to tell the truth. She's been living a lie for a decade since she faked her own death and abandoned her infant children. When circumstances forced her to re-enter their lives, she continued to lie to her children, introducing herself as their dead mother's sister and then whisking them off to a new life. Her lies put the children and her partner, who's only known her as Leah Trenton, in danger but she still can't bring herself to tell the truth. The impact of this fundamental dishonesty drove a lot of the action of the book and created an ambiguous moral tone that I enjoyed.

Then there's Dax Blackwell, the ultra-competent, cool-in-a-crisis hitman. At first, I thought he'd be the contract-killer-with-a-moral-code who would risk everything to save the mom-in-peril and her adorable, brave and innocent children. After all, there are a few versions of that character in top selling Thriller series. I was delighted to find that Blackwell was more complicated than that. He does have a professional code for doing business, one that he learnt at his father's knee, but it doesn't involve rescuing people or putting himself at risk for no reward. He's someone who tries hard to be a rational man who takes decisions without being swayed by emotions. I liked that, although his actions almost always seemed rational to Blackman, they often came as a surprise to me. It took me a long time to work out that Blackman really wasn't on anybody's side but his own. This meant that I could never be sure who he would help and who he would hurt but I knew that, whenever he was involved, someone would die.

These two wildcards interact with well-drawn versions of people you'd hope to meet in any good thriller: an evil billionaire and his two hard-hearted assassins, a bright, brave but distrustful and unhappy teenage daughter determined to protect her cute but useless little brother, a boy-next-door-with-a-crush who is in danger of being collateral damage, Nina/Leah's almost-too-nice-to-be-true young partner and his loyal dog.

I had fun with this novel but, in the end, I found Blackman's unpredictability a little unsatisfying. I believed in the outcomes but I wasn't swept along by them.

To me, it felt as if the novel moved quite slowly at the start but that might be because I started with the audiobook version of 'Never Far Away' and ended up returning it by the end of Chapter 5 because the narrator, Robert Petkoff, kept emoting all over Michael Koryta's prose, seemingly trying to squeeze some melodrama out of a story that didn't need it.

Once moved to the ebook version, I was more comfortable and could appreciate the hard-edged dispassion with which the violence and death that peppers the book were described.

The final big confrontation scene of the book had me on the edge of my seat. I had no idea how it was going to go and who, if anybody, would survive. Even so, when the cards were shown and the survivors were known, I found the ending a little abrupt. I think Michael Koryta wanted to end on an adrenalin high rather than get bogged down in a here's-what-happened-to-eveyone-aftwards chapter. Maybe he was right but it surprised me. show less

In this very creepy ghost story, Eric Shaw, a failed movie director who's settled for making videos for funerals and birthdays, is offered a job looking into the life of an elderly billionaire. Sent to the small town where the man grew up, Eric is also given a mysterious glass bottle of water, one the elderly man kept hidden from the family for most of his life. Curiousity drives Eric to try the water - once famed for curing all ills - and this tasting and his trip to Indiana sets in motion show more the release of the malevolent spirit of a man who terroized the small town in the 1920s and who shared the elderly billionaire's name.

Koryta's writing is great - the book is a thick one at 500 pages, but he quickly brings you into the story. While not exactly horror (I didn't have to sleep with the lights on, which is usually a good indicator of a terrifying story), but it is very unsettling and suspenseful. Clearly drawn characters, quickly moving plot, and a truly evil bad guy made this a great read.

Recommended! show less

Thanks to a reading challenge I decided to participate in this year on the Litsy app, I am reading beloved authors on my bookshelves that I have drifted from. (Sometimes I wonder if my obsession for books will eventually collapse on me. Haha.) Michael Koryta is an excellent writer of stories that check the boxes on mystery, crime, suspense, and thriller — and How It Happened reminded me exactly why I fell for him in the first place.

Set in rural Maine, FBI investigator Rob Barrett returns show more to Port Hope, the small coastal town where he spent summers as a teenager, to help solve the double murder of a promising local couple. He manages to extract a confession — something no other investigator had been able to do — from notorious jailhouse informant Kimberly Crepeaux, a young heroin addict and single mother. Her detailed account seems to close the case quickly. But when her story begins to unravel, the case is abruptly shut down, and Barrett must confront buried secrets from his own past, a lost love, and the dark underbelly of his community to uncover the truth.

The structure of the story is creative — it opens with Kimberly's confession, so the reader thinks they know exactly how the double murder happened. Or do we? Was Kimberly being honest, or simply living up to her reputation as a liar? That's the task at hand for Barrett, who is known as an expert at detecting deception. The suspense here doesn't necessarily come from twists, but from the intensity of the investigation itself and the way the stakes steadily rise.

Koryta develops characters that are both easy and difficult to care about, and his writing conveys genuine empathy for them from the very start. I felt my heart sink into this book as my mind worked to solve the mystery alongside Barrett.

Overall, How It Happened is a tense, character-rich thriller with a vivid sense of place and emotional weight. Koryta delivers another winner that kept me fully invested until the final page. Highly recommended for fans of thoughtful, atmospheric crime fiction.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog show less