Last Words by Michael Koryta

Markus Novak is a private detective for Innocence, Inc., a Florida based company that uses modern forensic technology to evaluate the guilt or innocence of convicts.  His wife, Lauren also worked for this do-gooder organization when she was murdered.  Markus becomes obsessed with solving her murder and takes actions inconsistent with the ethics of his employer.  His boss sends him to Southern Indiana on the pretense of evaluating a possible new case but more realistically to get him out of Florida to gain a fresh perspective.

Small town Garrison, Indiana was known to tourists for Trapdoor Cavern.  But the cave was closed to the public when a teenage girl, Sarah Martin was lost and died in the cavern nearly ten years earlier.  Ridley Barnes was the local spelunker who found her body and retrieved it from the cave.  But Ridley is a strange bird. An eccentric recluse, he feels more comfortable alone in the dark, in tight quarters underground, than he does on the surface in everyday society.  Further, he personifies the cave and thinks it has powers and can talk to him.  When he refuses to discuss how he found Sarah’s body, he quickly becomes the leading suspect for her death.  But it isn’t that Ridley just won’t talk about finding Sarah, he can’t remember how or where he found her.  Without evidence, local officials can’t charge Ridley and he just becomes more of a societal outcast.  After years of psychological misery, he tries hypnosis to help him remember but with limited success.  He decides to contact Innocence, Inc. hoping a fresh investigative look will resolve events surrounding Sarah’s death.  At this point, he just wants to know the truth whether it implicates him or not.

So, Markus Novak arrives in Garrison to evaluate the case.  But apparently there are those who don’t want the truth about Sarah to be known.  Markus is lied to, kidnapped, beaten, drugged and left for dead inside Trapdoor Cavern.  Yet after Markus is rescued, the sheriff does not believe his story and now his reputation is on the line in Indiana as well as in Florida.  Now he has no choice but to personally take the case.  Finding the truth about Sarah’s death is the only way to save himself.

I’ve read a couple Michael Koryta books and this is the first time (that I know of) he writes about his resident state, Indiana.  In fact, the location of the fictional Trapdoor Cavern as he describes it, can’t be more than an hour from his home in Bloomington.  As for Last Words, I had some trouble liking the protagonist, Markus Novak.  True he had some events in his life that incite sympathy but I thought he acted more out of necessity instead of nobility… perhaps a little too self-serving for my brand of hero.  Nonetheless, the author leaves the door open for a sequel.  I’ll probably read it when nothing else looks appealing.