The Prophet. Finished 2-17-15, rating 4.5/5 stars, thriller, pub. 2012

Unabridged audio, 11 hours 50 minutes.  Read by Robert Petkoff.

Adam Austin hasn’t spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman, working so close to the town’s criminal fringes that he sometimes seems a part of them. Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Kent’s team has a shot at the state championship, a welcome point of pride in a town that has had its share of hardships. Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered. As details emerge that connect the crime to the Austin brothers, the two must confront their buried rage and grief-and unite to stop a killer.

We get to know Adam from the very beginning and he was such a fascinating character.  Haunted by his sister’s murder and fiercely protective, he is willing to cross every line that the law has placed in his way.  Enter his brother, the football coach, the other side of the family tree is viewed as the local hero, an image he strives to cultivate every day.  When the law seems unable to protect him he isn’t afraid to ask his big brother for help if though they’ve long been estranged.

This is an excellent thriller, especially if you love football and I do.  The action centered around the high school football team and their quest for a state title, which includes a lot of play by play. It’s set in a small, Cleveland area town on Lake Erie and I knew this town even if it wasn’t real.  This book felt like the character study of two brothers and one small Ohio town and I was drawn into the bleakness and pain as much as I was into the current bad guy running around town.

This was my first Koryta read and I can’t wait to read more. Any Koryta fans out there? What should I read next?