Michael Koryta has written several books. I\'m told that SO COLD THE RIVER is not a good one to start with because it is so different from the others. But I did begin with this one.

SO COLD THE RIVER reminds me of a Stephen King novel. That is not to say that if you like King, you\'ll like Koryta. You might, but I found a problem that I don\\\\\\\'t have with King\\\\\\\'s novels.

This book starts out promising. Eric, a failed filmmaker hoping for a comeback, is hired to make a movie about an old, dying man. So Eric begins in the cities where the man grew up, West Baden and French Lick, Indiana. The cities and the great hotel in West Baden are not fiction, but the supernatural properties of the water there, obviously, are.

Koryta has a good story going. Problem, though: he is just too wordy. Many paragraphs in this book should have been whittled down to a sentence, or they should even have been eliminated because Koryta was only repeating himself.

But Koryta\\\\\\\'s writing is good; I\\\\\\\'d like to try his other books. SO COLD THE RIVER only needs better editing to eliminate the unnecessary wordiness.