Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Release Date: August 16th, 2016
Synopsis: Rise the dark. These were the last three words written in Laura Novak’s notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They’ve never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Marcus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her is out of prison, and draws Marcus to the place he’s avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a town called Cassadaga.
In Red Lodge, Montana, a senseless act of vandalism shuts the lights off in the town where Sabrina Baldwin is trying to adjust to a new home and mourning the loss of her brother, who was a high voltage linesman just like her husband, Jay. As the spring’s final snowstorm calls Jay deeper into the mountains, chasing the destruction on the electrical grid, Sabrina is abducted by Garland Webb, the man Marcus Novak believes killed his wife. Drawing them all together is a messianic villain who understands that you can never outpace your past. You can only rise against the future.
I’ve been a fan of Michael Koryta’s for several years, and Rise the Dark is a perfect example of why I believe he’s one of the best authors out there in terms of writing mystery, suspense and thrillers. Although this is the second book in his Mark Novak series, after last year’s Last Words, have no fear. You can easily pick this up without feeling lost whatsoever. Koryta gives just enough details about what happened in the previous story, but not so much as to slow down the action here. This book begins with Mark’s continuing pursuit of his wife’s killer, while at the same time tackling a new threat involving a sinister messianic villain intent on domestic terrorism. The two stories become intertwined in a very interesting way. Koryta even makes all the technology behind our power grid system interesting to a non-technical person like me. There are also brief hints of the supernatural which adds another intriguing layer to a tightly packed storyline. As in the first book, Mark Novak shines as the MC, but there are plenty of compelling secondary characters backing him up. The action begins on the very first page and it never slows down until the electrifying conclusion, which sets things up nicely for the third book. Michael Koryta is a master storyteller and if you haven’t tried him already, I can’t recommend him highly enough!
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