Never Far Away by Michael Koryta

Published by Little, Brown and Company on February 9, 2021

Thrillerworld has a plentiful supply of “mother fights ferociously to protect her children” novels. Most of them aren’t very good. Never Far Away is well above average.

Michael Koryta’s plot has quite a few moving parts, but the story avoids needless complexity. At its center is a woman named Leah Trenton. At least, that’s her current name. When she was Nina Morgan, she gave the FBI information about her employer, the Lowery Group. The information caused trouble for Corson Lowery and his family. Lowery came after her and she didn’t want her family in the line of fire. For the sake of her husband and two children, she faked her death and disappeared.

Ten years later, Leah has made a new life for herself as a wilderness guide in Maine. She’s a former Air Force pilot but she didn’t let the seaplane pilot with whom she had partnered know about her flying skill, for fear that her background would make her easier to trace. They’ve invested in six remote cabins that they are remodeling as part of their wilderness excursion business.

Things seem to be going well until Leah’s husband dies in an accident. Following instructions her father drummed into her years earlier, Leah’s daughter Hailey calls Leah, believing Leah to be an aunt she has never met. Leah takes custody of her son Nick and daughter Hailey, then brings them to Maine, hoping that Lowery will not suspect that she is still alive.

Seasoned thriller readers can imagine where the story goes from there. Lowery sends killers after Leah, who makes it her mission to protect her kids. One of the killers, appropriately named Bleak, is a quintessential thriller villain, devoid of conscience or empathy. Leah tries to get help from the friend who helped her fake her death but worries that contacting him has imperiled his life. The two killers are eventually joined by a mysterious man named Dax Blackwell, whose family has done business with Lowery in the past. Shootouts ensue.

The story is enlivened by Hailey’s teenage attitude. She doesn’t appreciate being removed from her home and her friends. She really doesn’t like the Maine woods, where she can’t get consistent cellphone reception. She sort of likes a student at her new school named Matt Bouchard, who has an obvious crush on her, if only because Matt has promised to help her gather information that Hailey might need to get back home. Hailey is no fan of Leah, whom she regards as an aunt who never bothered to visit. Before Leah can explain that she’s actually Hailey’s mother, a conversation that might not go well, the aforementioned shootouts intrude on their family drama.

The shootouts give Leah a chance to prove that she’s no pushover. When Matt and her business partner find themselves in harm’s way, Leah’s priority of saving her kids is joined with her need to save other innocents who have been dragged into her thriller plot. All of that gives Leah a chance to shine, both as a thriller hero and as a decent human being.

Koryta keeps Never Far Away moving at a steady pace while taking the time to define his characters with sentences like, “The man had a shaved head and dark, observant eyes and was all lean muscle, no body fat, as if he bench-pressed any incoming carbohydrate before he ate it.” Writers who craft such imaginative prose will always keep me reading if they use the prose to tell an interesting story. Koryta does that.

Unlike most modern thrillers, I never questioned the credibility of Koryta’s plot. His characters seem fully capable of getting themselves into the predicaments that drive the story. Tension builds nicely until the story reaches a satisfying conclusion. Prose, plot, and characterization combine to make Never Far Away a transcendent take on the overused “mother protects her kids” thriller.

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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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