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A review by mikedeab63
The Ridge by Michael Koryta
4.0
It's easy to toss off comparisons between authors when trying to describe a book to someone. It's an easy comparison point for publishers in trying to distinguish authors (so many books, so many authors) and jackets are littered with blurbs and breathless comparisons. In my experience the comparisons are rarely true. If you're lucky, they will strike a glancing blow.
So I'm leery, but that said, I've rarely seen an author that lives up to the Stephen King comparison (1980s McCammon is the closest thing that springs to mind) than Michael Koryta. Shrugging off the crime genre conventions that led to a five book series, Koryta's latest trio of supernatural tinged novels (So Cold the River, The Cypress House & The Ridge) carry all the hallmarks of vintage era King. Small towns, a clutch of realistic everyman characters, sly and crafty antagonists, normal situations tilted just slightly off center so the menace slowly builds to a boil. For me, it's just quality storytelling where characters rise above their stock cardboard cutouts and the plot feels like it grows organically each piece dovetailing with the next inexorably as the momentum grows to a climax that fits the book rather than coming out of left field (as some supernatural books feel).
On it's face, this book shouldn't work nearly as well as it does. A lighthouse in the middle of the mountains, a drunk caretaker, a big cat preserve, a cop returning from a life threatening wound, all mixed with supernatural spices? Sounds ridiculous, but Koryta builds it all slowly and the sum of the parts work as a compelling story of loss, sacrifice and mystery.
So I'm leery, but that said, I've rarely seen an author that lives up to the Stephen King comparison (1980s McCammon is the closest thing that springs to mind) than Michael Koryta. Shrugging off the crime genre conventions that led to a five book series, Koryta's latest trio of supernatural tinged novels (So Cold the River, The Cypress House & The Ridge) carry all the hallmarks of vintage era King. Small towns, a clutch of realistic everyman characters, sly and crafty antagonists, normal situations tilted just slightly off center so the menace slowly builds to a boil. For me, it's just quality storytelling where characters rise above their stock cardboard cutouts and the plot feels like it grows organically each piece dovetailing with the next inexorably as the momentum grows to a climax that fits the book rather than coming out of left field (as some supernatural books feel).
On it's face, this book shouldn't work nearly as well as it does. A lighthouse in the middle of the mountains, a drunk caretaker, a big cat preserve, a cop returning from a life threatening wound, all mixed with supernatural spices? Sounds ridiculous, but Koryta builds it all slowly and the sum of the parts work as a compelling story of loss, sacrifice and mystery.