Michael Koryta's novel Tonight I Said Goodbye earned an Edgar nomination for best first novel. A Welcome Grave was published in 2008. He has also written a standalone crime novel called Envy the Night.
Stabenow's latest Kate Shugak novel finds the intrepid Alaskan PI facing a personal tragedy and its unexpected repercussions. Old Sam, Kate's uncle and surrogate father, has died, leaving her heir to and executor of his estate. Kate has no way of knowing that Old Sam's actions will pull her into a life-threatening mystery whose roots hark back to Alaska in the early 20th century and continue to the present day. Marguerite Gavin gives an excellent reading of Stabenow's prose: she keeps the story moving at an energetic clip, which works especially well with the action sequences. With a nice sense of timing, she brings out the laugh-out-loud humor laced through the book, most notably in the scenes between Kate and her "Aunties," and manages to balance the book's extensive cast of characters, shifting points of view, time frames, and passages of Alaskan history with a bright, engaging performance that keeps the listener tuned in from the introduction to the final chapter. A Minotaur hardcover. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
P.I. Lincoln Perry is back-and this time it's personal. Perry hears that Ed Gradduk, his estranged childhood friend, is accused of murdering a lawyer and then burning the house down around her and has subsequently become the object of a manhunt through their old neighborhood. Perry feels compelled to help his old friend, who proclaims his innocence. But the chase ends with Gradduk dead under the wheels of a cop car, eliminating any hope of reconciliation and opening up a lot of questions for Perry, who witnesses the accident. Perry isn't sure that Gradduk is guilty and sets out to find the truth, but first he has to deal with some old baggage and call in a lot of favors. While it is interesting to read about childhood friends who have grown in different directions and yet find their lives still intertwined is interesting, the pacing is uneven, the characters fall flat, and the plot just strains credibility. A disappointing second effort from Koryta, the gifted young writer of Tonight I Say Goodbye. Recommended for larger fiction collections. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 10/1/05.]-Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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