So Cold the River

It started with a beautiful woman and a challenge. As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past--just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life. In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history--a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored--a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2010: Award-winning author Michael Koryta's first foray into the supernatural genre is spellbinding and check-your-doors-and-windows scary, and it all begins with a check and a bottle of water. Filmmaker Eric Shaw had a knack for getting the exact right shot--an unexplained tug that unerringly put him on the right path--until his temper killed his Hollywood career. He gets a shot at redemption when a wealthy young woman commissions a video tribute for her father-in-law, a dying millionaire named Campbell Bradford. A man with a shady past, a town with a rich history, and an antique bottle of water claiming to "cure all ills" lead Shaw to small town West Baden, where things quickly go sideways. Shaw finds himself at odds with Bradford's only surviving family, a bitter and violent great-grandson named Josiah, and that once familiar tug of Shaw's becomes something darker and more dangerous. At its deliciously creepy core, So Cold the River is about two men facing down their demons, and what happens when those demons fight back. --Daphne Durham

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this explosive thriller from Koryta (Envy the Night), failed filmmaker Eric Shaw is eking out a living making family home videos when a client offers him big bucks to travel to the resort town of West Baden, Ind., the childhood home of her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, to shoot a video history of his life. Almost immediately, things go weird. Eric uncovers evidence of another Campbell Bradford, a petty tyrant who lived a generation before the other and terrorized the locals. The older Campbell begins appearing in horrific visions to Eric after he sips the peculiar mineral water that made West Baden famous. Koryta spins a spellbinding tale of an unholy lust for power that reaches from beyond the grave and suspends disbelief through the believable interactions of fully developed characters. A cataclysmic finale will put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror, among which this book ranks. 6-city author tour. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Up to now, Michael Koryta has quite successfully produced crime fiction. So a supernatural thriller might strike some as a bit off the beaten path (according to Koryta, the book was originally a novella that transformed itself into a longish novel, and he leaves room at the end for a reprise). So Cold the River is game in the attempt: critics make the inevitable comparisons to Stephen King (particularly The Shining, since much of Koryta's novel takes place in a creepy Indiana resort hotel), which can only be good news for the author. Still, the book's pacing is uneven, and Koryta "never makes the leap from curiosity to gripping page-turner" (Onion AV Club). But keep an eye on the author, whose two novels set for next year will continue to trace the arc of a promising young writer.

From Booklist

Eric Shaw’s promising career as a Hollywood cinematographer crashed and burned. Now he’s back in Chicago, making “video life portraits” of recently deceased people. One of these portraits brings a new commission: Eric is to travel to tiny West Baden, Indiana, and document the early years of Campbell Bradford, a wealthy, about-to-die Chicago businessman who was born in West Baden but has never spoken about his childhood. Within hours of his arrival, Eric experiences a vivid and portentous vision and hallucinations that seem related to the town’s mineral springs. Signs and portents of a resident evil bombard him as he researches his project, and eventually the evil becomes manifest. After successes with noirish mysteries (The Silent Hour, 2009), Koryta has ventured into genre-bending, successfully melding thriller elements to a horror story that recalls Stephen King. His tight, clear prose makes West Baden as creepy as Transylvania, and Eric is a compellingly flawed protagonist. Legions of King and Peter Straub devotees will be delighted by this change of direction; Koryta’s hard-boiled fans may feel a bit nonplussed at first, but they, too, will fall under the spell of this very strange Indiana town. --Thomas Gaughan

About the Author

Michael Koryta is the author of five previous novels, including Envy the Night, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best mystery/thriller, and the Lincoln Perry series, which has earned nominations for the Edgar, Shamus, and Quill awards and won the Great Lakes Book Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A former private investigator and newspaper reporter, Koryta lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida.

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