About the Book
Sometime after midnight, on a moonless October night turned harsh by a fine, windswept rain, one of the men I liked least in the world was murdered in a field near Bedford, just south of the city ... The detectives went looking for suspects--people whose histories with Jefferson were adversarial and hostile. At the top of that list, they found me.
So begins A Welcome Grave, the third novel by award-winning mystery writer Michael Koryta featuring private investigator Lincoln Perry. Once a rising star on the Cleveland police force, Perry ended his career when he left one of the city's prominent attorneys, Alex Jefferson, bleeding in the parking lot of his country club--retribution for his affair with Perry's fiancée.
Now Jefferson is dead, the victim of a brutal murder, and his widow has called upon Perry for a favor he knows he shouldn't grant but can't turn down: to find Jefferson's estranged son, partial beneficiary of the dead man's fortune. The case is simple enough, a routine "locate," and he'll be paid plenty of money for the work. The encounter should be simple, too: a brief exchange of information and maybe an empty condolence before Perry gets back into his truck and returns home. Instead, he's loaded into a police car and taken to a rural jail while Jefferson's son is zipped into a body bag.
Perry soon learns that Jefferson's millions are the target of a thirst for revenge that hasn't been satisfied by blood. As a pair of deadly assailants push deep into the investigator's life, they bring with them police from two states who are determined to see Perry in jail.
Building on the skill that prompted the Toronto Sun to call him "one of America's best young mystery writers," Michael Koryta makes A Welcome Grave an intense exploration of the lengths to which a desperate man is forced to go to clear his name and solve a crime. This is a thrilling new book that justifies the critical acclaim and solidifies his role as an emerging talent among today's top writers.
About the Author :
Michael Koryta is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, most recently The Prophet. His previous three novels, The Ridge, The Cypress House, and So Cold the River, were all New York Times notable books and nominated for several national and international awards. In addition to winning the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, his novel Envy the Night was selected as a Reader's Digest condensed book. Koryta's work has been translated into more than twenty languages. A former private investigator and newspaper reporter, Koryta graduated from Indiana University with a degree in criminal justice. He currently lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Bloomington, Indiana.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.
Review :
"[A] top-notch thriller."
-- "Booklist"
"Addictively readable."
-- "Chicago Tribune"
"Edgar-finalist Koryta stakes a claim as one of today's preeminent crafters of contemporary hard-boiled mysteries...His haunting writing and logical, sophisticated plotting rival that of established stalwarts like Loren Estleman."
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"For a while now, Michael Koryta has been called one of the rising young talents in crime fiction. I say enough of that. A Welcome Grave proves the promise. Koryta is one of the best of the best, plain and simple. With stories like this, his Lincoln Perry is going to be around for a long, long time."
-- "Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author"
"In the last few years, new writing talent has entered all subgenres of crime fiction. One of the names at the top of the list is Michael Koryta. He is a breath of fresh air, his writing is clear and concise, his observations on the darkness of the human condition show how the PI novel is one of the finest forms in all of fiction writing...Mr. Koryta is on his way to being a master of the PI novel, sacred ground indeed."
-- "Richard Katz, Mystery One Bookstore"
"Koryta's third Lincoln Perry novel is given a first-rate rendition by Scott Brick...Brick adds a shade of guilt to the detective's already downbeat first-person account. And...Brick is especially successful in voicing the supporting players, capturing the halting uncertainty of Perry's partner, Joe Pritchard, wounded in body and spirit from a previous adventure, and a hint of honor in the heavily accented, unemotional speech of Thor, a cold-blooded Russian mob enforcer who assists Perry in a time of need."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"Scott Brick's well-crafted performance gives listeners a realistic portrait of [PI Lincoln] Perry, as well as the voices of his partner and his girlfriend. His best character, hands down, is that of the stoic Russian gangster, Thor, whose assistance saves the day. Fans of PI fiction will thoroughly enjoy this excellent production."
-- "AudioFile"
"Sentence for polished sentence, no one in the genre writes better."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
"Stylish prose...well observed."
-- "New York Times"
"The best entry yet in Kortya's Lincoln Perry private eye series...A Welcome Grave showcases his accomplished writing skills. Highly recommended."
-- "Library Journal"
"With the publication of A Welcome Grave, it's time to stop referring to Michael Koryta as a boy wonder and just focus on the sheer wonder of his storytelling. Koryta knows how to put his characters--and his readers--into an ever-tightening vise of twists, turns, and conspiracies, but it's his empathy that makes his work stand out. This is a nuanced, mature novel that proves both the depth of Koryta's talent and the vitality of the PI genre."
-- "Laura Lippman, Edgar Award winner and author of No Good Deeds"
