Markus Novak is a tortured man.  He and his wife, Lauren were working for a Florida based firm called Innocence Incorporated that defends death row inmates. As part of their investigation Lauren was going to interview a psychic who claimed to have new insights into their case. They had fought about whether she should go or not and his last words to her as she left for the interview were: “Don’t embarrass me with this shit.”  She never returned.  She was found murdered and even after two years they have not been able to find the killer. Not that Markus hasn’t tried and it is actually the fact of how hard he tired and how many lines he crossed in trying to find his wife’s killer that has now landed him in Garrison, Indiana to evaluate a case for Innocence, Inc., while his boss tries to persuade the board not to fire him.

The case is a putz case and Novak is sure they will never take it. For one thing Ridley Barnes, the man who wrote them, isn’t on death row. He is free, although under some suspicion for a murder that took place almost ten years before. A young girl, Sarah Martin, went missing and several days later, Ridley Barnes, who was a caver, found her body and brought her out of the cave. But there were things that didn’t quite fit about Ridley’s story. For one thing he kept talking about a dark man in the cave, and he was never quite sure whether Sarah was alive when he found her or not. Additionally no one, not even Ridley has ever been able to find the place in the cave where Sarah was found. So although there were suspicions, no one could actually prove that Ridley had killed her and the case was dropped. Now Ridley wants to reopen the case to find out once and for all what happened even if that means that they find out that he was the one that killed her. A noble gesture, no doubt, but as Novak gets to know Ridley he wonders about his sanity. For one thing he talks about the cave as if it was alive, and for another he seems to see some commonalities between himself and Novak that are creepy to say the least. In any case, Novak knows that all he needs to do is just go through the motions until he gets the go ahead to go back to Florida. But events occur that make that hard to do. People are not who they seem to be and someone or something seems to resent him being there at all and soon Novak must either solve the mystery of who murdered Sarah Martin or risk being killed himself.

Koryta (ko-ree-ta) is a masterful writer and Novak is an interesting complex character who is obviously in denial about how much his grief for his wife is affecting his life and judgement. Ridley Barnes is a strangely sympathetic and repellant character and Koryta navigates between the two extremes with some delicacy.  Koryta also uses the “uh-oh” factor to great affect to get our attention and lets his characters wriggle and twist as they try escape from the choices they have made. I look forward to learning more about Novak as it seems that Koryta plans another book about him!

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 out of 5 Stars)  

Recommend this book to:  Marian, Sharon and Keith

Book Study Worthy? yes

Read in ebook format.