Rise the Dark by Michael Koryta

Published by Little, Brown and Company on August 16, 2016

Rise the Dark is a thriller that sometimes reads like a horror story. It’s more thriller than horror, but elements of the supernatural make occasional appearances, and then play a more significant role near the novel’s end. The novel follows (and refers to) the events that took place in Last Words, but it can easily be read without reading the first novel in the series.

Garland Webb bragged to Markus Novak about killing Novak’s wife, a crime for which he was never arrested, despite Markus’ efforts to find evidence of his guilt. In Rise the Dead, Markus wants to settle the score.

While Markus is looking for Webb, Webb is busy kidnapping Sabrina Baldwin for Eli Pate, who intends to use Sabrina as leverage to get help from her husband. Pate plans to spread panic and Jay Baldwin’s knowledge of high voltage power lines can help him with that task. Jay is an interesting character because his brother was electrocuted while working with transmission lines, leaving Jay with haunting memories that he has never been able to overcome.

Also figuring into the story are a deadly electrical engineer named Janell Cole and a woman named Lynn Deschaine who has been pursuing Pate. Since Lynn is an attractive female, she might rekindle Markus’ interest in women, which has been dormant since his wife died.

The plot revolves around Pate’s evil scheme. He is spreading threats across the internet in a variety of languages, expecting the more paranoid elements of American society (particularly survivalists) to squabble amongst themselves as they blame one of many perceived enemies, foreign and domestic, for the threatening event. That’s a fairly original spin on a standard thriller plot, and the detailed description of how Pate’s scheme will be executed is convincing.

Ghosts and clairvoyants and psychics all play a role in the novel. After Markus visits a creepy house, a strange kid who lives in the neighborhood gives him some information that he learned from his dead friend. That’s not quite as strange as the goofy belief that Eli gets his instructions from nature, or more precisely, from the mountains of Wyoming.

The plot hangs together reasonably well, thanks to Michael Koryta’s ability to provide convincing explanations for events (such as Markus’ return to his home town as he tracks Webb) that initially seem like implausible coincidences. Markus is the product of a dysfunctional family, a common background in thrillers, but Koryta makes better use of Markus’ past than most thriller writers manage.

Rise the Dark is also smarter than most thrillers. Koryta understands that the terrorism that most threatens America is homegrown. That gives the novel a sense of realism that standard thrillers pitting heroic Americans against evil Muslims lack. The novel isn’t as emotionally involving as I want a thriller to be, but it’s stimulating and suspenseful. That makes it an easy book to recommend.

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