For the last few years here at SFFWorld, it’s become a bit of a tradition that in October we countdown to the 31st by highlighting items of interest to get you ready for what should be a genre highlight of the year. Up to the plate once again has stepped Forum member Randy M., who puts forward books and other items that may be of interest.

Be sure to join us in the Countdown to Halloween thread

THE RIDGE by Michael Koryta (2011; Back Bay Books)

“Which would you rather have: a homicide or a suicide?

… ”I wanted to know if there was any difference in the way you’d investigate,” the man said, his words clearer now, less of the bourbon speaking for him. “Do you pursue the root causes of a suicide in the same manner that you would a homicide?”

… ”I pursue the truth.”

–from The Ridge

Wyatt French has been a small thorn in the side of Sawyer County Sheriff Kevin Kimble. Besides his bouts of public intoxication, French built a lighthouse in the woods in the hills outside Whitman, Kentucky, its light a nuisance to the owners of the new big cat preserve, disturbing the animals at night. So when Kimble receives a call from French on his personal phone while driving to the Women’s penitentiary to interview the woman who shot him eight years earlier, he’s not inclined to be receptive and friendly. Until French’s ramblings begin to sound dangerous, possibly to others and more probably to himself. But French’s reassurances soothe Kimble and, mired in his personal problem, he dismisses the call.

French also calls Roy Darmus, a reporter for the recently defunct Sawyer County Sentinel. Darmus had covered the lighthouse when French first built it and had not treated it as a joke. After a similar ramble French hangs up. Darmus, disturbed by the tenor of the conversation, travels to the lighthouse and finds French dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot.

Now Kimble and Darmus face the mystery of when a suicide isn’t a suicide, why a drunkard would build a lighthouse far away from a coast, and how that drunkard and hermit could afford to equip it not just with the usual lighthouse light but also apparently a battery of infra-red lights. And why? Why a lighthouse? What is in these hills that needed to be lighted? And why the pictures pinned to the walls of the lighthouse, among them several people who died in that section of the Kentucky hills, people like Darmus’ parents, but also one who didn’t die, the woman who shot Kimble eight years earlier?

Joining them is Audrey Clark, recently widowed, and the proud caretaker of the only black panther known to exist, so rare experts question its reality even after seeing it. And Audrey and her expert caretaker wonder at its intelligence. When it escapes, easily jumping the fenced space it had allowed them to put it in and kills a deputy, a hunt for the cat ensues. But there is something else out there, too. And it might be more dangerous.

The Ridge is a fine example of a supernatural thriller, joining apparently separate strands from its characters lives to provide clues to the truth of what has visited the region and which Koryta gradually unveils through a logical progression of event and incident. The mapping and gradual understanding of those incidents by Kimble and Darmus is believable which leads to a quality of the novel I truly appreciate: Koryta’s characters do not spend a lot of time disbelieving. Of course they do at first, but when the evidence they acquire points to the other worldly, they accept that they are facing something beyond their experience and try to find ways to contend with it. I found The Ridge well-written and well-thought out, an altogether entertaining thriller.

Other spooky novels:
Night has a Thousand Eyes by Cornell Woolrich
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub

Small town life:
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge