Sorrow's Anthem

by Michael Koryta

Overview

ONCE LINCOLN PERRY AND ED GRADDUK WERE FRIENDS. THEN PERRY BECAME A COP, GRADDUK TURNED DANGEROUS, AND THEIR FRIENDSHIP IMPLODED. NOW, GRADDUK IS DEAD. AND PERRY WANTS TO USE HIS PI LICENSE TO PROVE THAT WHATEVER ELSE HIS CHILDHOOD FRIEND MIGHT HAVE BEEN, HE WASN'T A MURDERER.

For the police, this case is over. The woman Gradduk is alleged to have killed can't tell her side of the story, and the building she entered with him has burned to the ground. But Perry is making connections to a wave of arson that struck Cleveland seventeen years ago-fires that lit up the dark secrets of two families, a local powerbroker, and at least one crooked cop. Now Perry and his partner can see ties between the past and present, between innocents and criminals-and sirens that keep playing...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798989584239
Publisher:	Carson Street
Publication date:	01/09/2024
Pages:	326
Sales rank:	777,600
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL KORYTA’s first novel, Tonight I Said Goodbye, was published when he was just twenty-one. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he began working as a newspaper reporter and for a private investigator while still in high school. He later kept both jobs while he attended Indiana University. Tonight I Said Goodbye won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Contest for first novel and the Great Lakes Book Award for best mystery, and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best first novel.

Editorial Reviews

Koryta's impressive second hard-boiled mystery is a worthy successor to his debut, Tonight I Said Goodbye (2004), an Edgar and Shamus finalist. Cleveland PI Lincoln Perry, haunted by the circumstances that led to his estrangement from his best friend, Ed Gradduk, clutches at an opportunity for redemption on learning that Gradduk is a fugitive from the law, suspected of arson and murder. Perry's hopes of repairing their relationship are dashed after his childhood confidant dies in an accident. As a result, Perry shifts his mission to clearing the dead man's name. Perry, aided by his partner, follows a winding trail of dirty cops and multiple suspicious fires toward the truth. The 22-year-old author, who works for a PI and for an Indiana newspaper, displays credible insider knowledge of those professions as well as a gift for creating both sympathetic characters and a fast-moving, twisty plot. Author tour. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

P.I. Lincoln Perry is back-and this time it's personal. Perry hears that Ed Gradduk, his estranged childhood friend, is accused of murdering a lawyer and then burning the house down around her and has subsequently become the object of a manhunt through their old neighborhood. Perry feels compelled to help his old friend, who proclaims his innocence. But the chase ends with Gradduk dead under the wheels of a cop car, eliminating any hope of reconciliation and opening up a lot of questions for Perry, who witnesses the accident. Perry isn't sure that Gradduk is guilty and sets out to find the truth, but first he has to deal with some old baggage and call in a lot of favors. While it is interesting to read about childhood friends who have grown in different directions and yet find their lives still intertwined is interesting, the pacing is uneven, the characters fall flat, and the plot just strains credibility. A disappointing second effort from Koryta, the gifted young writer of Tonight I Say Goodbye. Recommended for larger fiction collections. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 10/1/05.]-Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

You can't go home again. Or can you? Cleveland's Clark Avenue-where private eye Lincoln Perry, ex-con Ed Gradduk and Scott Draper, owner of his family's bar, The Hideaway, grew up as best pals-is under fire. The torch, caught on surveillance tape, is Ed, who presumably killed Anita Sentalar, head of the National Alliance rebuilding project, before he burned down a house under construction. Lincoln, refusing to believe it, tracks down Ed after eight years. They barely speak before the suspect is run over, maybe accidentally, by Padgett and Rabold, the cops chasing him. Against the better judgment of his shamus partner Joe Pritchard (Tonight I Said Goodbye, 2004), Lincoln delves into Ed's immediate past, which has also attracted the interest of local cop Cal Richards and the Feds. Central to their investigations are area gangster Jimmy Cancerno and missing day-laborer Mitch Corbett, who worked with Ed on Cancerno's buildings. Before he's found with the help of Lincoln's reporter pal Amy and Pritchard's cop contacts, there'll be more Clark Street conflagrations, more death and two new versions of a 20-year-old story of terror and intimidation. It'll take Lincoln's heroics to save both Draper and Pritchard before the neighborhood quiets down and Lincoln can come to terms with his own past. Nicely told, with the requisite genre beatings and gunplay reserved for the end and the equally requisite angst, this time over past misdeeds, front and center.

Kirkus Reviews