Review by New York Times Review
MICHAEL KORYTA is a fearless stylist who has put his hand to ghost stories, historical novels, killer-thrillers, revenge tragedies, morality tales and detective stories. He's now swinging from the high wire with THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (Little, Brown, $26), a heart-thumping backwoods adventure that sends two creatively sadistic killers into Montana's Beartooth Mountains, where they spark a monster forest fire to flush out the only witness to their crimes: Jace Wilson, a 14-year-old boy. Jace was just trying to escape his reputation as class coward when he dived into a quarry near his Indiana home. But when he swam into a dead man - and spotted the killers flinging a second victim into the water - Jace knew he was going to die. Reborn with a new name, he finds himself among the "bad kids" in a grueling wilderness survival course, parked there when his parents couldn't be persuaded to put him in a traditional witness protection program. Jace's hunters, the Blackwell brothers, are heartless sociopaths whose professional detachment is etched in their unnervingly precise grammar and careful diction. ("The way they say things. Like they're alone in the world. Like it was built for the two of them and they're lords over it.") There will be no mercy from that quarter. Koryta rigs his tripwire plot with all sorts of unpredictable characters and unforeseen events, including a "flint-and-steel" electrical storm that will make your hair stand on end. There are any number of hunting parties combing the burning woods for Jace, from the Black-well brothers to two determined women riding an injured horse. But sitting here, heart in mouth, it sure looks as if that raging forest fire will outrun them all. IS THERE ANYTHING more unnerving than the realization that you can't trust your own mother? Maybe the realization that you can't trust your father either. That's the killer premise Of THE FARM (Grand Central, $26), a psychological thriller by Tom Rob Smith that draws on the universal fear of losing a parent. The narrator of this split-focus story is a young man named Daniel who lives in London and hasn't been in close touch with his parents since they retired to a farm in rural Sweden. Then one day he gets a frantic phone call from his father, who tells him that his mother has had a psychotic break and is in an asylum. But before Daniel can head for Sweden, his mother arrives with a wild tale of being terrorized by his father and the rich owner of a neighboring farm. Smith's atmospheric narrative draws on fearsome local legends about trolls with "shrapnel teeth" and "bellies like boulders," but as Daniel discovers, the "iron nights" of winter in rural Sweden can drive a stranger a little crazy. IN SUSPENSE FICTION, walking into danger is usually women's work. Joseph Finder flips that convention in SUSPICION (Dutton, $27.95) when a writer named Danny Goodman, a widower who's going nowhere on a biography of Jay Gould, gets into hot water by accepting a $50,000 loan to keep his daughter, Abby, in her pricey private school. The loan comes from Tom Galvin, the indecently rich father of Abby's best friend, and soon after the check clears, two D.E.A. agents strong-arm Danny into spying on Galvin, who's reputedly acting as a financier for a Mexican drug cartel. Finder sets a stiff pace for the escalating crises that keep Danny both in thrall to his handlers and in a state of high anxiety. As he gets to know Galvin, and even considers him a friend, he finds himself wondering what, exactly, makes Galvin any different from a 19th-century robber baron like Jay Gould. SOME PEOPLE CAN'T get enough of Jack the Ripper, and for that clique there's Alex Grecian, who takes an obsessive interest in Saucy Jack in his historical potboilers. "He was deathless," we're told in THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP (Putnam, $26.95), in which a freakish jail break allows the monster to escape from his cell at Bridewell Prison and embark on another murderous rampage. Detective Inspector Walter Day and other members of Scotland Yard's elite Murder Squad are on hand for the blood bath, as is Dr. Bernard Kingsley, whose work in the new field of forensic science lent historical authenticity to the series's previous novels. Unfortunately, scientific investigation doesn't figure much in this narrative, which is firmly fixated on the savagery of Jack's deeds. SOMEONE IS WATCHING you, but no one is there. Charlotte Link plays on that primal fear in her psychological suspense story, THE WATCHER (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), when an attentive killer goes to work on single women so socially alienated that their bodies can lie undiscovered for days. "What they have in common is their loneliness," one of the Scotland Yard detectives remarks. More mystifying is what the victims have in common with Gillian Ward, who lives with a husband, a 12-year-old daughter and a black cat named Chuck. Unless it happens to be Samson Segal, the neighbor who's stalking the family because they reside in "the world he had always dreamed of." The cool precision of Link's narrative voice (translated from German by Stefan Tobler) makes it clear why this kind of adulation is so chilling.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 29, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Koryta, a widely praised veteran of cross-genre tales, has upped his game with this stand-alone's seamless blend of western-wilderness thriller and mainstream crime fiction, with a prickly dab of horror. Ethan Serbin, an elite survival-skills instructor during his Air Force career, now runs a similar program for troubled teens in the Montana wilderness. Without warning, a former student reappears, pleading with Ethan to take on a special student. Jace Wilson witnessed the terrifyingly calculating Blackwell brothers committing murder, and he's in hiding until he can testify. In Ethan's camp, the former student reasons, Jace will be off the grid and protected by one of the few men certain to help him survive. Ethan agrees, and once the teens arrive that summer with Jace hidden among them, it's not long before the brothers come for him, flaunting their mystifying ability to manipulate the authorities attempting to keep Jace's location secret. Unmatched in weapons and brutality, Jace; Ethan; his wife, Allison; and a young fire watcher named Hannah Faber battle to survive a raging wildfire and the murderous intent of a creepy pair of killers rivaling the deadly preacher in The Night of the Hunter. A must-read for fans of C. J. Box and Nevada Barr. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Combine Koryta's existing fan base, the current vogue for wilderness thrillers, and an aggressive marketing campaign, and you get a novel certain to attract a whole lot of eager readers.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A lack of morally complex characters facing tough ethical choices makes this fast-paced thriller a lesser effort for Edgar finalist Koryta (The Prophet). At an abandoned quarry in Indiana, 13-year-old Jace Wilson, who's just jumped into the quarry's pool, sees two men in police uniform cut a man's throat and toss him into the water. The killers chase Jace after finding his clothes, but he manages to escape. Jamie Bennett, a former U.S. Marshal, places Jace in the care of a friend of hers, survival trainer Ethan Serbin, who takes him along on a wilderness training program that he runs for troubled youths in Montana, though Ethan doesn't know which of the seven boys he'll be instructing needs witness protection. Inevitably, the two creepy killers get on Ethan's trail. For someone as smart as Ethan is supposed to be, he fails to anticipate an obvious move on the part of the killers, leading to the first of several developments that many readers will view as contrived. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Kortya (The Prophet) opens his latest thriller with a very likeable 13-year-old Jace Wilson witnessing a brutal murder committed by assassins-and brothers-Jack and Patrick Blackwell. Instead of being placed in the regular witness protection program, the boy is hidden in a Montana wilderness survival camp for troubled teens, run by Ethan and Alison Serbin. Jace and Ethan are soon putting their outdoor skills to the test as they are hunted down by the Blackwell brothers. Allison and a former firefighter named Hannah round out the cast of characters in this fast-paced, terrifically entertaining novel. VERDICT The Blackwell brothers' devious methods, the fire raging across the mountains, and the actions of those trying to save Jace will keep readers up well into the night. With a national author tour and movie rights already sold, this, Kortya's tenth novel, could be the one that brings the talented writer into the mainstream. [See Prepub Alert, 1/6/14.]-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Hiding a teenage murder witness among a bunch of delinquent kids in a survival-training program in Montana seemed like a good idea. But when two coldblooded killers track him there from Indiana, everyone's life is at grave risk.The program is run by Air Force veteran Ethan Serbin, who lives with his wife, Allison, in a mountain cabin. She distrusts Jamie Bennett, a federal marshal and former trainee of Ethan's who shows up in the middle of the night, having recklessly driven into a blizzard, to plead for their help. Jamie says the boy, Jace Wilson, is too hot for even a witness protection program. When Jace arrives, it's anonymously, under the name Connor Reynolds. He's badly lacking in confidence but proves adept in handling himself outdoors. Just as he's settling in, though, the killerstwo brothers with a creepy way of conversing with each other even as they're about to commit an atrocityinfiltrate the mountain community. Knowing what they're capable of, Jace/Connor drifts away from the pack, teams up with a female fire ranger who feels responsible for her boyfriend's accidental death and fervently hopes an escape route he devised as part of his training will lead them to safety. Having joined the ranks of the very best thriller writers with his small-town masterpiece, The Prophet (2012), Koryta matches that effort with a book of sometimes-unbearable tension. With the exception of one plot turn you'll likely see coming from a mountain pass away, this novel is brilliantly orchestrated. Also crucial to its success is Koryta's mastery of the beautiful but threatening setting, including a mountain fire's ability to electrify the ground, radiate a lethal force fieldand create otherworldly light shows.Summer reading doesn't get better than this. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
