If She Wakes is Michael Koryta‘s most recent novel. (2019)

Some feel it’s his best.

Michael Connelly calls Koryta the genre’s “best of the best“.

Certainly the plot is fascinating:

Tara Beckley is in a coma. Her brain is working perfectly, but she cannot move.  She has locked-in syndrome.

Tara knows that a visiting professor has been murdered, but can’t tell anyone.  Her family is thinking of pulling the plug.

Abby Kaplan, an insurance investigator and former professional driver, is suspicious about the supposed accident. 

Meanwhile, two assassins have been dispatched to clean up the mess and recover a secret device. 

I did like the book and plan to read more Koryta.  Best character, for me, was Dax — son of one of my favourite characters from “Those who wish me dead”.

This is my second Koryta book, and I now know see why Stephen King and Lee Child are such fans.

The bad guys are two of the best/worst I can recall in fiction.

The book never lags.  And much of the action happens in mountains, the hiker in me was thrilled.

Many feel this is his best book, so far.

When fourteen-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he’s plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens.

The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.

Angelina Jolie will star in the movie.

The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Emily St. John Mandel.

This is literature.   The author is a young, Canadian from Comox, British Columbia.

I listened to it while cycling near Comox.

It follows the aftermath of a disturbing graffiti incident at a hotel on Vancouver Island and the collapse of an international Ponzi scheme.

The Atlantic said:

“The structure is virtuosic, as the fragments of the story coalesce by the end of the narrative into a richly satisfying shape. There are wonderful moments of lyricism.”

The character of Vincent is fascinating.  I want to know more about her.

I really liked her previous book too – Station Eleven.

Update – Later I tried the sequel, Rise the Dark, but couldn’t finish.

Michael Koryta is a prize winning American author of contemporary crime and supernatural fiction.

This is his first book that I’ve read. It was recommend by many of my favourite authors.

That said, this one is only OK.

Markus Novak, the lead character, is neither compelling nor all that interesting.

The plot is excellent, however. And surprising.

Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing. On the same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana. Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak to uncover what really happened.

Amazon

Well written, as expected.  French is one of our best living authors.

Surprising. Original.

I liked but did not love this novel.

The narrator is Toby Hennessy, social media guru for an art gallery.

After confronting burglers (?), Toby is beaten nearly to death. To convalesce from his amnesia, aphasia, headaches, and PTSD he retreats to his Uncle Hugo’s country house to recuperate.

A skull is found by a child in an old Witch Elm. The real mystery starts there.

Much of the book is dialogue between Toby and his childhood best friend / cousins, Susanna and Leon.

This is modern literature.  I do recommend the book. 

Stephen King’s review:

French has eschewed her popular Dublin Murder Squad series here to write a stand-alone novel, and as often happens, her work — never dull to begin with — has gained a certain lively freshness.

Oh, there are detectives, and they arrive equipped with all the surface bonhomie and dangerous, not to say feral, undertones that we are used to in a French novel.

The only difference here — and it’s a big one — is that when they finish one of their nerve-jangling interviews and exit Ivy House, the Dublin manse where most of “The Witch Elm” is set, we are not privy to their speculations or deductions. …

Is the novel perfect? Nope. …

This is good work by a good writer. For the reader, what luck.