Review: Envy The Night

ENVY THE NIGHT by Michael Kortya

ISBN: 9781741755916
Australian Pub.: September 2008
Edition: 1
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Imprint: Arena
Subject: Crime & Mystery

Michael Koryta’s background has allowed him gather an impressive platform on which to base his crime writing career. He began the multi-award winning Lincoln Perry series when he was only 20. At 26 he has graduated from Indiana University, majoring in criminal justice. He is an award winning newspaper reporter, and now works as a Private Investigator at Indiana’s only certified legal business of that type.

His fourth book is a stand alone tale about Frank Temple – the third. Frank’s father (that would be FTII) was a hitman, a hired assassin of the finest calibre. He worked in the shadows with evil men such as Devin Matteson, but when FTII put a pistol in his mouth, an FBI agent drilling for the truth, fed an impressionable kid the lie that Devin was the cause. Unfortunately that kid was FTIII, not an ordinary kid by any stretch of the imagination. Frank’s dad had trained him to meet all the bad in the world head on; he had turned his kid into a weapon.

But FTIII wasn’t the same cold calculating individual his dad was. Frank had control over his inner demons until events conspire to drag him back to an idyllic spot in Wisconsin.

The first 100 or so pages were a slow burn, introducing us to the setting and the major players – and lots of background. There was no increase in pace. At the slightest indication of a heart beat, things were forcibly slowed down like a post heart-attack sufferer under instruction from an old time matron.

The middle third of the book picked up a little, introducing us more to Frank’s abilities, the dangerous situation he’d found himself in and hinted at the mystery surrounding everything.
Finally moving toward the climax, things are just believable enough to lead to a vaguely satisfying ending.

This is a coming of age, man facing his inner turmoil, hugely flawed but highly skilled leading man meets strong willed but vulnerable lady and does good, type of thing. The mystery was transparent, the characters predictable and amazingly well skilled.

Michael is lauded as one of the best in Mystery writing and a star of the future. Personally, I thought the prose simple and well written, but the plot slow and unengaging. The characters didn’t come across as real to me. Overall, I was disappointed.