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It’s just an empty house on Whisper Ridge in Ohio. Once, it was a place for rehabilitating paroled murderers, but now it’s left to ruins with only a peculiar epitaph to mark its passing. The owners, Joshua and Alexandra Cantrell, vanished years ago. But then the bones of Joshua Cantrell turn up buried across state lines in Philadelphia.
Twelve years ago, convicted murder Parker Harrison worked at Whisper Ridge as a part of his rehabilitation. Alexandra’s disappearance has always bothered him, so he hires Private Eye Lincoln Perry to find her. Perry wants nothing to do with a murderer—rehabilitated or not—but then his conscious starts bothering him, so he takes the case. When he finds out Harrison has been lying to him, he drops his investigation, only to be dragged back in by another private eye, Ken Merriman, who has a vested interest in the case, but he can’t seem to solve it on his own.
Perry knows that he needs to find Alexandra to get the truth about what happened to her husband twelve years ago. Some believe that her brother, Dominic Sanabria, the son of a deceased mafia don, killed him. Others figure that one of the paroled murderers got him. But what happened to Alexandra? And, if she’s still alive, why won’t she come out of hiding?
The Silent Hour grips you right from the beginning, immersing you in a bizarre mystery that demands that you keep reading until it’s solved. Lincoln Perry is so unpretentious and genuine that you can’t help but relate to him as he questions his life and grapples with a murderer’s past. Come on, admit it…you’d be uneasy around a paroled murderer, too—and you probably wouldn’t be entirely convinced of his rehabilitation and trustworthiness, either.
One thing I’ve learned about fictional private eyes is that they’re easily depressed and jaded by life—but who can blame them when they encounter so much human depravity throughout their careers? Lincoln Perry is no exception, and he considers the sanity of keeping his business open while investigating his latest case—especially when most everyone around him is a liar, including those who have no good reason not to tell the truth.
With an elaborate and compelling plot that’s filled with secrecy and deception on all sides, The Silent Hour, is an engaging read that’s not easily set aside when life calls you out of the fictional world and back into reality. Mr. Koryta blends together action and investigation, producing a perfect balance between the two—so you’re never bogged down with too much of one or the other. As a result, I truly enjoyed The Silent Hour and look forward to any future novels written by author Michael Koryta.
