So Cold the River

So Cold the River
by Michael Koryta
Little, Brown, 2010. 508 pgs. Fiction

Eric Shaw was a highly-esteemed cinematographer in Hollywood until he punched out a blowhard director. Now he makes funeral films--retrospectives of the recently deceased. Eric's uncanny ability to capture on film the essence of people he never knew lands him a job in West Baden, Indiana, where his employer sends him to discover and film something about the boyhood of her father-in-law, who is nearing death. West Baden was at one time one of the great spa sites in America, famous for its "Pluto Water," a sulphurous curative which Eric takes a sip of from a bottle the father-in-law has kept all these years. He becomes violently ill, but is drawn back to the water and tries it again--this time it has a mild honey flavor and he finds it fends off the headaches he has suddenly developed. Oddly enough, the bottle of water also stays perpetually cold, even developing a sheen of frost in the summertime heat. The reader figures out quicker than Eric that he might want to lay off this stuff but in the meantime he has begun to see things no one else can: a train surrounded by black smoke, with a devilish figure in the boxcar door, for instance. Turns out Eric has let loose a malevolent spirit, a former resident of the valley known for his wicked ways, who has come back for vengeance and dominion. Already an honored writer of detective fiction, Koryta has here taken a fine first step into the horror/suspense genre. His characters are well developed and appealing or frightening, respectively. The setting is historically accurate and the narrative seamlessly incorporates local lore. I don't normally "do" scary, but I couldn't leave this book alone.