{"id":1459,"date":"2014-09-30T14:24:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2014-09-30T14:24:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:24:52","slug":"michael-koryta-those-who-wish-me-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/michael-koryta-those-who-wish-me-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Koryta: Those Who Wish Me Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"thosewhowishme\"<\/a>I\u2019m not a big fan of those headlines that read \u201cThe Best Writer You\u2019ve Never Heard Of,\u201d mostly because I often\u00a0have<\/i>\u00a0heard of said writer. It\u2019s a tidy formulation, however, and it scans much better than, say, \u201cHere\u2019s a Fantastic Writer Who\u2019s Much Better Than Most of the Crap on the Best Seller List.\u201d But say it any way you like, Michael Koryta is such an criminally underappreciated author.<\/p>\n

He began his career while still in college with a superior private eye series set in Cleveland. The Lincoln Perry books started strong and only got stronger, ending not (as so many readers believe) at the artist\u2019s whim, but simply because for whatever reason they failed to sell enough copies. Fortunately, publishers can see beyond a track record to discern true quality, and Michael was \u201crelaunched\u201d with three novels that mixed suspense with the supernatural.<\/p>\n

Although they worked for me in a way that most of the far too many books inspired by Stephen King do not, I was glad when Michael returned to pure crime with 2012\u2019s\u00a0The Prophet<\/i>, a masterful exploration of family, guilt, courage, football and small town Ohio, all propelled by a white knuckle plot.<\/p>\n

His new book\u00a0Those Who Wish Me Dead\u00a0<\/i>is another powerful stand-alone, a straightforward action thriller that hits the ground running and never lets up. Jace Wilson is a young man who has witnessed a killing by two very scary guys that is at the heart of a massive police cover-up, and when no official form of protection seems to be effective, he\u2019s placed incognito in a wilderness program for troubled teens run by Ethan Serbin, a survival expert. Of course, this stratagem fails to throw the creepy hell-hound killers off the scent, and the chase is on in the midst of the Montana mountains, replete with snakes, lightning strikes and forest fires.<\/p>\n

Koryta has all the tools of an All-Star, and he displays them in this compelling book. The prose, the setting, the pace, the characters \u2013 particularly Hannah Faber, the fire lookout and former fire fighter with her own demons to contend with \u2013 are exemplary, and make\u00a0Those Who Wish Me Dead\u00a0<\/i>virtually unputdownable. Robin wants the ten best list this year to be all women but I\u2019m inviting Michael to crash the lady party \u2013 this book is that good.\u00a0(Jamie)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a big fan of those headlines that read \u201cThe Best Writer You\u2019ve Never Heard Of,\u201d mostly because I often\u00a0have\u00a0heard of said writer. It\u2019s a tidy formulation, however, and it scans much better than, say, \u201cHere\u2019s a Fantastic Writer Who\u2019s Much Better Than Most of the Crap on the Best Seller List.\u201d But say … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1461,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}