So Cold the River »

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

It started with a documentary. The beautiful Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to unearth the life story of her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose childhood is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job, even though the only clues to Bradford's past are his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life.

In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary past—a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once intermingled. Long derelict, the hotel has just been restored to its former grandeur.

But something else has been restored too—a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to settle a decades-old score. And with every move, Eric inches closer to the center of the building storm.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Evils from the grave permeate Michael Koryta's superb So Cold the River. The tale melds crime fiction, history, and gothic horror, and its mounting suspense moves the reader along at a surprisingly brisk pace through more than 500 pages. Framed by fantasy but grounded in the everyday, the real dread Koryta conjures springs from his characters' fears that they haven't lived up to their own expectations.

Once on the brink of a big movie career, Eric Shaw now barely gets by making videos of others' lives, especially for funerals. Eric thinks he can develop a documentary from his current job shooting a video history of dying billionaire Campbell Bradford. The reclusive Campbell and his hometown of West Baden, Ind., known for its extravagantly restored resort hotel, are a story "that begged for telling."

Campbell's only possession from his past is a strange glass bottle filled with water from a nearby spring. Drinking from this vessel produces frightening visions about another Campbell Bradford, a nasty tyrant who ruled the town with appalling violence more than 80 years ago. Josiah Bradford, a petty criminal, stalks Eric, seething that his family name hasn't brought him money or power.

The supernatural hangs heavily over the story-the long-dead Campbell, it develops, is actively trying to regain his power from the grave. But So Cold the River roots itself in a refreshing sense of the real. Koryta won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Envy the Night, and here he captures the rural beauty of Indiana while imbuing the area with the feel of impending doom-culminating in a slam-bang ending with tornadoes manifesting Campbell's wrath. It's a satisfying capper to a tale that harvests its suspense, and its charms, from local sources.

--Oline Cogdill