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A review by ncrabb
Last Words by Michael Koryta
5.0
I’ve rarely read something that involved me so much in its pages, and I suspect you’ll have the same experience.
Mark Novak works for a law firm in Florida whose purpose it is to exonerate death row prisoners who aren’t guilty. It’s an innocence project. His wife worked there, too, until someone put a bullet in her brain. They had argued, and Mark’s last words to her were caustic and anything but romantic. With her death, his life spiraled out of control. He became obsessed with solving her case to the exclusion of most of his other duties. The company’s board wanted to fire him, but his boss insisted that all he needed was some time to work another case in another city. That’s how Mark ended up in southern Indiana in the cold of winter. Years before Mark’s arrival there, a teenage girl worked in a cave near the town. It was to be a tourist attraction for the area. One day, the girl, Sarah, hid herself so well in the cave no one could find her. A few days after that, Ridley Barnes, a local spelunker, staggered out of the cave carrying her body. He has no memory of how he stumbled onto it. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict him of murder, and he is haunted by what he doesn’t remember. He sent a letter to Mark Novak’s employer begging for its help investigating the teenage girl’s death. That’s why they sent Mark Novak.
But things go badly for Novak at the outset. He isn’t warmly welcomed by local law enforcement, and a woman claiming to be the dead girl’s mother sets him up for failure. He doesn’t know it, but the girl’s mother is already long dead. The woman, whoever she was, played Mark for a fool.
Things get exponentially worse when, while investigating, Mark runs afoul of some local thugs who drug him and trap him inside the cave. It is the bizarre Ridley Barnes who rescues him, and once he recovered from the hypothermia and other maladies brought on by his ordeal, he picks up the investigation where he left off. There are as many twists and turns in this investigation as there doubtless were in the cave where he nearly died.
This is a gripping involved book, and the narration is beyond excellent. I ran it at 2.75X and enjoyed every syllable. So intense is this that it almost felt like I needed to gasp for air in a place or two. I found myself involuntarily sweeping my arms over my head and around to remind myself that I was safe inside my spacious house with no water in places where water shouldn’t be and plenty of ventilation. That’s the impact this had on me. I’ll read the second book in this duology sooner than later.
Mark Novak works for a law firm in Florida whose purpose it is to exonerate death row prisoners who aren’t guilty. It’s an innocence project. His wife worked there, too, until someone put a bullet in her brain. They had argued, and Mark’s last words to her were caustic and anything but romantic. With her death, his life spiraled out of control. He became obsessed with solving her case to the exclusion of most of his other duties. The company’s board wanted to fire him, but his boss insisted that all he needed was some time to work another case in another city. That’s how Mark ended up in southern Indiana in the cold of winter. Years before Mark’s arrival there, a teenage girl worked in a cave near the town. It was to be a tourist attraction for the area. One day, the girl, Sarah, hid herself so well in the cave no one could find her. A few days after that, Ridley Barnes, a local spelunker, staggered out of the cave carrying her body. He has no memory of how he stumbled onto it. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict him of murder, and he is haunted by what he doesn’t remember. He sent a letter to Mark Novak’s employer begging for its help investigating the teenage girl’s death. That’s why they sent Mark Novak.
But things go badly for Novak at the outset. He isn’t warmly welcomed by local law enforcement, and a woman claiming to be the dead girl’s mother sets him up for failure. He doesn’t know it, but the girl’s mother is already long dead. The woman, whoever she was, played Mark for a fool.
Things get exponentially worse when, while investigating, Mark runs afoul of some local thugs who drug him and trap him inside the cave. It is the bizarre Ridley Barnes who rescues him, and once he recovered from the hypothermia and other maladies brought on by his ordeal, he picks up the investigation where he left off. There are as many twists and turns in this investigation as there doubtless were in the cave where he nearly died.
This is a gripping involved book, and the narration is beyond excellent. I ran it at 2.75X and enjoyed every syllable. So intense is this that it almost felt like I needed to gasp for air in a place or two. I found myself involuntarily sweeping my arms over my head and around to remind myself that I was safe inside my spacious house with no water in places where water shouldn’t be and plenty of ventilation. That’s the impact this had on me. I’ll read the second book in this duology sooner than later.