Whispers by Dean Kootz

A 4.8 scale tremor gently rocks Los Angeles.  A nameless man sleeps in his van, plagued by nightmares, comforted by waking alongside his knives and dreaming of killing the woman he is searching for.  Hilary Thomas, up and coming screen writer, struggles with feelings of inferiority and self doubt as she waits to see if her newest creation has been accepted.  Drinking in her success she begins to relax, to begin to believe that the world is not the bleak brutal one she had to learn to be tough to survive.  Then she returns home and the man is waiting for her and he wants her dead.

Koontz always has had fascinating ideas, examining up close the worst that humans are capable of and asking the question what if, what if a child is raised in a certain way, what does brutality do to the psyche of a child and the adult they become.  Whispers is fascinating for these ideas, but this is one of Kootz's early works and in places his writing doesn't quite work, in particular in the sex scenes which can be a little cringeworthy.  However, the power of the ideas  and the imagination that would go on to make Koontz such a prolific and successful writer are very much in evidence.

The Face of Fear by Dean Koontz

The women of New York City are being hunted by a murder called the Butcher, a modern day Jack the Ripper.

Graham Harris is a clairvoyant, an unwitting witness to murder who has been plagued by visions since a climbing accident five years earlier shattered his confidence and his body and bequeathed to him an unwelcome psychic talent. Harris receives visions of killers when he touches things at murder scenes and has used this ability to help the authorities catch the perpetrator.

Connie Davis is Harris' partner, trying to nurse his traumatised spirit back to strength.

Anthony Prine is a late night talk show host with an unhealthy connection to the Butcher. He is interviewing Harris when Harris receives a vision of the Butcher's vicious slaughter of a pretty green eyed girl called Edna. But now the Butcher is aware of Harris.

Harris has a deadline for his climbing magazine so Davis joins him on the fortieth floor of the forty two storey Bowerton Building on Lexington Avenue for what looks to be an all-nighter. This is where the Butcher traps them, and the book is a nerve shaking game of cat and mouse as Davis and Harris try to evade the killer.

This is one of Koontz's earlier works and it is good, better than most other writers, but not yet completely up to his brilliant best. Most other writers would receive a higher rating for this kind of work but Koontz does a lot better, in places the book is not as well written as his later works.

A Big Little Life by Dean Koontz

Koontz's biography of Trixie, the golden retriever who changed his and his wife Gerda's lives from a work dedicated childless (but happily so) couple and turned them on to an awareness of the joyfulness with which an extraordinary dog such as Trixie meets and experiences every day.  There is no doubt that Trixie is extraordinary but it is also true that the revelations she brings to Koontz are those that experiencing life through the lives of any pet, or indeed, of a life lived in the moment, can and do bring.  Yes, it is overly sentimental and bucolic but sometimes that isn't a bad thing

The Vision by Dean Koontz

This was better than the previous version, The Face of Fear.  Here the clarivoyant is Mary Bergen, who works with police to help them solve cases.  She is accompanied by her brother and her husband, who come increasingly into conflict as to how to help her handle the emotional fallout of her work.  But now she is pursuing a serial killer and her visions have a new intensity, she is experiencing the pain of the victims and something seems to be pursuing her, something to do with the trauma buried in her past when she was sexually assaulted by the family gardener.  Gripping and much better in terms of focus and pacing, but for me the red herring was too obvious.

Trapped by Dean R Koontz and Ed Gorman

Based on one of Koontz's short stories this Gorman graphic novel has good ideas, lab rats that have been bred to enhance their intelligence and as a result are lethal, a threatened child and mother isolated on a farm, but without Koontz's extended prose there is no character development and it's not very good.

The Eyes of Darkness by Dean R Koontz

Tina Evans is an ex Vegas showgirl opening her first major show on the Strip and slowly coming to terms with the death a year earlier of her 12 year old son in a terrible crash with his scout troop in the high Sierra mountains, a crash that left his body so mangled she and her husband were advised to have a closed coffin ceremony.  Tina is now living alone, Danny's room remains unchanged and one night she hears a heavy thump from his room.  She finds Danny's blackboard overturned, on it are written two words: Not Dead.  Initially Tina believes it's a sick joke perpetrated by her ex-husband, but as the incidents increase in intensity and complexity, always saying that Danny is not dead, is in pain and needs her, she finally becomes convinced Danny is indeed not dead.  With attorney she heads for the mountains and, as often with Koontz, the answer lies underground in a secret lab where decisions are made by evil men for the 'good of the nation'.   Although this is an early Koontz novel familiar themes of a hostile government, the propensity of evil to thrive in secrecy and the benevolence of mysterious forces are already here.

The Funhouse by Dean R Koontz

This early Koontz story was written under one of his pseudonym Owen West and is a novelisation of a screenplay, which explains much of its lack of development.  The characters are very two dimensional and sympathy is difficult to find for them.  Amy Harper is a confused teenager, the daugther of a fanatical catholic alcoholic, Amy is torn between feeling that she is wicked and that her mother is the one that is not normal.  Her brother Joey is terrified by her mother's night time visits to his bedside when she belives him asleep and whispers that she is afraid that he is truly evil beneath the skin.  Their father is largely absent and ineffectual.  But Ellen hides a secret.  She is also the daughter of a fanatical catholic mother and when she was a teenager ran away to the fair to live a carny life.  She bore her handsome husband a child but he hid a terrible past of child neglect, self blame for the death of his mother and siblings in a fire, and turn to Satanism.  The child is a terrifying freak and Ellen kills the child, is beaten and left with the promise that her husband will find her and kill her children.  Obviously the fair finally comes to town and Amy and Joey end up in the Funhouse where their mother's secret almost kills them, but they escape.  Very black and white, even down to Amy's best friend who is heavily promiscous and she, her randy date and Amy's equally frisky partner, who have just agreed to a threesome, die in true Scream style.  This did, however, lay the groundwork for Twilight Eyes which is a much better version, although women still idealised in that too

Night Chills by Dean R Koontz

Koontz opens his book with two strange dangerous looking men emptying some kind of chemical into a reservoir in the isolated logging town of Black River, they return to their motel, one drives off, one stays in the motel, both receive odd phone calls about locks and keys.  One drives himself into a wall at 100 mph, the other opens his femoral and ulnar arteries with a razor and bleeds out in the motel bath.  All over Black River people experience night terrors, and then to the town comes the sinister Ogden Salsbury, a pathological misogynist genius with a terrible hold over the people of the town.  Widowed Paul Annendale comes to the town to camp with his two children Rya and Mark and is connected, too coincidentally, with the only two people not to suffer night terrors, his girlfriend Jenny and her father Sam, the only person who can decipher the events unfolding in Black River.  A cracking start to a good story by Koontz, but it does creak a bit in places and the bad guys are too simply drawn.

Demon Seed by Dean Koontz

Interesting book about the dangers of AI, about a computer that is so intelligent it develops consciousness and desire.  Most of all it wants embodiement and invades the automated systems of beautiful self isolated Susan Harris.  Chilling, but not his best.

Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz

This is not one of Koontz's best books, there are jarring cliches and technical failings throughout but that doesn't matter.  Twilight Eyes is a nostalgic book, set in 1964, the year of Kennedy's death, and has a haunting melancholy for a lost time of certainties, a world beginning to fracture with the Bay of Pigs.  Carl Stanfeuss is a 17 year old boy on the run, going by the name of Slim MacKenzie because he killed his Uncle Denton with an axe, believing he could see through his Uncle's skin and see inside another evil creature, that he calls goblins.  He breaks into the Sombra Brothers Carnival at night looking for work, and encounters another goblin sabotaging the dodgems, he kills this creature but when he comes to dispose of it the creature is gone.  He joins the carnival as a caller and falls in love with his boss, and finds he is not alone in seeing the creatures that pass for human.  As the Carnival travels to the mountain town of Yontsdown Slim finds himself in a nightmare world where the figures of authority, police, judges, clergy, are goblins and that something terrible is being created.
I love this book because of its place in my own personal history, I read it as a teenager and it soothed the sorrow inside of me.  I may not have been aware of goblins as such, but they can be read as a metaphor for the evil within humanity and its potential for horror, balanced against the courage of people who cannot just stand by and let even unkindness be the dominant force in the world, let alone terror and pain and fear.  It set me on a hard but worthwhile path, that standing by is not an option, however tempting that may be.

Breathless by Dean Koontz

Grady Adams and his Irish wolfhound Merlin have an encounter with two large white creatures which bear no resemblance to any creature seen before on earth.  Vet Cammy Rivers witnesseses a room of traumatised puppy farm retrievers spontaneously become still and then release all their suffering and become like normal happy dogs, and a field full of horses and assorted ducks, goats and other animals stand fixed in one direction for 15 minutes and then revert to normal.  Henry Rouvray brings death to the house of his twin Jim and his wife Nora but it is soon him that is being stalked.  Good but ends far too quickly, feels like the issues contained within with regard to the subject of evolution are not properly worked through.

Relentless by Dean R. Koontz

A new Koontz book is always a joy to me, as his books have been my comfort and constant companion since I was a child, and although the moral undertones and endless capacity for optimism that good things will in time come to good people feels at times naive, I am a committed fan.

When Cubby Greenwich receives a scathing review of his book by the feared critic Shearman Waxx he is inclined to do as his beautiful loving wife and tiny Einstein son advise and let it go, but then curiosity gets the better of him and a chance encounter with the critic in the toilet of his local favourite restaurant swiftly turns into something more sinister. Gripping and uplifting.

Dead and Alive: Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Book 3 by Dean R Koontz

Another great book, the third in Koontz's Frankenstein series rewriting Shelley's modern myth with hope and horror in equal measure. A return to familiar Koontz themes of what it means to be human, the creation of new races, the temptations and dangers of intelligence and love, oh, and the intelligence of canine friends. Unlike Odd Hours I didn't think any of it felt a little stale, there is a deep humanity in Frankenstein's monster Deucalion and many of Shelley's themes and fears are raised here in the same way she wrote about them, most of all about the fact that creation is monstrous if it is not the wonder of pregnany and birth through the female line.

The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean R Koontz

Koontz has been my constant companion since late childhood and I read everything new by him. Koontz drags you through terror and pain to redemption and the power of good. His books are deeply spiritual but he doesn't push the whole god thing. This isn't his best, but it's still better than a lot of the rest