Sun 1 Mar 2015
A Review by David Vineyard: MICHAEL KORYTA – The Cypress House.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
MICHAEL KORYTA – The Cypress House. Little Brown, hardcove, January 2011; paperback, July 2011.
When that is the first line, it is difficult not to go to line two, and so it is with this excellent noirish crime novel, that also happens to be a supernatural novel. You will see it compared to Stephen King, but don’t let that scare you away. Koryta is a first class crime novelist who found his niche in writing tough noirish novels that veer into the supernatural with an admirable ease.
I have avoided the horror genre for the last decade, but Koryta can write. He can also create characters you care about, evil you fear, and choreograph violence like no one else. He’s closer to a cross between John D. MacDonald and Cornell Woolrich than Stephen King.
The time is during the depression, and WWI veteran Arlen Wagner is drifting to his birthplace with a plan we will soon learn, but on the way there, he sees dead men on the train and with nineteen year old Paul Brickill leaves the train in a small North Florida town.
Wagner has reason to trust his instincts. Since Belleau Wood, he has been able to see death coming. He has been able to talk to the dead.
The decision to leave the train at that point wasn’t that good either, though. He has fallen into the fiefdom of Judge Solomon Ward and Sheriff Tolliver and his henchmen deputies. Getting away doesn’t seem likely, so he and Paul find themselves staying at a ramshackle hotel by the ocean owned by beautiful Rebecca Cady.
This is not a modern gothic by any means, for all its atmosphere. Wagner is as tough and hard as any Hammett hero, and Koryta’s prose can be as clean and cut. He doesn’t dwell or linger on gore and grue like a sick twelve-year-old. There are real scares here. There are real mysteries, and not the supernatural kind. Rebecca is tough and beautiful, no fainting heroine to be saved, and her developing relationship with Arlen believable.
Rebecca Cady hates Ward and Tolliver, but is somehow tied to them. As she and Arlen and Paul wait for a coming storm, tensions build between the two men, both attracted to her, and as Arlen pieces together the secrets of Cypress House and the corrupt little county, he is drawn even closer. They used to smuggle whiskey through Cypress House, and once Rebecca’s father was Solomon Ward’s partner, but now Ward holds Rebecca’s convict brother’s life over her head and is in a far more sinister trade.
The final one hundred pages or so of this book consist of a sustained running battle between Arlen and Ward’s men. It may not be a tour de force, but it is as suspenseful and well written as any I have encountered a long time, and Arlen’s history and gift/curse play into it with little or no strain on the reader.
Like the storm the violence and Arlen Wagner won’t be held at bay for long. Both will break with unexpected violence.
I can’t emphasize enough that this is and remains a fine crime novel more than a supernatural one. It never veers off message, loses a step, nor forgets where it is going. Kortya is the most sustained and capable crime writing novelist I have encountered in a long time.
Arlen will fight his battle and confront his personal battle and destiny in a believable manner with the ending so perfect I don’t want to even hint at it.
I won’t explain what that means in Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, but it does have power. American noir meets American Gothic, and readers of both genres have a win-win. All I can say is this one would make a hell of a noirish crime film, supernatural or not.
Few modern writers I’ve picked up recently impressed me this much, and on top of all that, I found it remaindered for a buck at a dollar store. I would have happily paid more.
March 1st, 2015 at 4:43 pm
It’s been quite a while since I read a “Stephen King” type book, but maybe this is the one. After your review, David, I’d certainly pay a dollar for it. I’ll keep an eye out for it. It’s too early in the year (too cold) for libraries to start having their sales, but that sounds like where I may be able to find one for fifty cents.
If I don’t buy it at Barnes & Noble first.
March 1st, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Some of his books have more supernatural elements in them than this one, but he is not writing warmed over Stephen King like so many others. There are real mysteries afoot and characters more comfortable in crime novels than horror novels.
He’s staked out a veritably unique patch of ground all his own with these books. Early on he also wrote some good straight crime novels too.
He’s the first new horror novelist I’ve read in a long time.
On top of that this one is set in Florida and you know how sick I am of the Florida novel. Didn’t mind a bit with this one.
March 1st, 2015 at 10:00 pm
I think you had me when you said “He’s closer to a cross between John D. MacDonald and Cornell Woolrich than Stephen King.”
Now there’s a combination that caught my attention.
March 3rd, 2015 at 4:13 pm
I stopped by Barnes & Noble today, but they had only one title by Koryta, not this one, and I passed it by. I’ll check out the other B&N later this week. It’s farther away but they have a larger selection.
I did buy the latest Clive Cussler book that’s come out in paperback. It’s very difficult to keep up. The one I bought is in the Fargo series that Thomas Perry has been doing.
March 3rd, 2015 at 4:19 pm
Perry didn’t do the most recent Fargo for whatever reason, which isn’t unusual with these, especially in Cussler’s case. So far only the Isaac Bell series has stayed a one man show by Justin Scott. All the other series have had multiple writers, the Kurt Austin and Fargo both on their third writer. I noticed the other day than Grant Blackwood who wrote the original Oregon File series is now doing a series for James Rollins.
At least they are keeping writers employed, and most of them are good if not great (Scott’s Bell series is far and away the best).
March 4th, 2015 at 1:31 am
Steve,
While it is more obviously supernatural you might still enjoy Kortya’s THE RIDGE, which is the most noirish ghost story you will likely read and a good suspense novel as well, with a remarkable femme fatale the hero cannot leave alone with an even more remarkable motive.
For the first one however I would stick with CYPRESS HOUSE since it is closer to a strictly straight suspense novel. At least one of his early novels (TONIGHT I SAID GOODBYE or SORROW’S ANTHEM I think) is not only a suspense novel, but a private eye novel in the Lincoln Perry series with no supernatural element other than Kortya’s haunting way with words, and ENVY THE NIGHT won best mystery/crime novel from the LOS ANGELES TIMES Book Prize.
March 21st, 2015 at 10:36 pm
Yes! Finally someone writes about review novel.