Envy the Night »

Michael Koryta’s first novel, the Edgar-nominated Tonight I Said Goodbye, was published when he was just twenty-one, and was followed by Sorrow’s Anthem and A Welcome Grave. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he has worked as a newspaper reporter and private investigator. His work has been translated into more than ten languages.
www.michaelkoryta.com

Michael Koryta secures his place as one of the thriller genre’s “most powerful voices” (Publishers Weekly) with a dark and psychologically complex novel about a young man trying to escape his past.

“With Envy the Night, Koryta earns a seat at the high table of neo-noir crime writers.”—The New York Times

In the seven years since he learned that his U.S. marshal father lead a double life as a contract killer—and committed suicide to avoid prosecution—Frank Temple III has mostly drifted through life. But when he learns that Devin Matteson, the man who lured his father into the killing game only to later give him up to the FBI, is returning to the isolated Wisconsin lake that was once sacred ground for their families, it’s a homecoming Frank can’t allow.

“A heart-pounding thriller.” —Boston Globe

Frank finds Matteson’s old cabin occupied by a strange, beautiful woman and a nervous man with a gun. But when a pair of assassins arrives on their heels, he knows Matteson can’t be far behind. The wise move would be to get out of town—but that doesn’t feel right. After all, contract killer or not, Frank’s father was at heart a teacher. And his son was an excellent student….

“Koryta’s best work to date.” —George Pelecanos

The Barnes & Noble Review

You can't always tell a book by its cover blurbs, but the ones decorating Michael Koryta's Envy the Night have the crystal ring of truth and admiration. Michael Connelly and George Pelicanos are not often generous to a fault, but Koryta's first stand-alone thriller -- after three books in his excellent series about Indiana private eye Lincoln Perry -- might make you rush out to obtain it and lock yourself in your room until you finish it. Koryta's Lincoln Perry books were wonderful slices of midwestern noir (A Welcome Grave was an Edgar finalist). But Envy the Night is that rarest of literary creatures: a stand-alone thriller that we want to be a series. Could it happen? Could Frank Temple III, the 24-year-old son of a hired killer, and Nora Stafford, at 30 the unwilling proprietor of her comatose father's auto body shop, survive all the dangers they face in the bucolic Wisconsin lakefront town known as Willow Flowage, just down the road from Tomahawk? We live in hope. "Frank had endured a lot of pity over the years, some genuine, some false," Koryta tells us. "Sometimes it would be expressed directly to him; other times it just showed in their eyes. Poor kid. Imagine having such a monster for a father. The problem, though, the one that Frank saw and nobody else ever could, was that he'd been a good father..." Nora is another beautifully drawn character, a basically sad young woman forced home by family devotion and now as lonely and displaced as Frank. They bond to stay alive, although even that part of their relationship is frequently tested. Other characters -- an auto body worker from hell who turns out to be some kind of hero, an enigmatic FBI agent who keeps an eye on Frank for guilty reasons of his own, and a motley crew of inept and very ept villains -- are also brought to life with lots of art but very few words. --Dick Adler