Driving home from Florida last weekend, Gary filled me in on the first couple hundred pages of Breathless
, which he'd been reading at the beach, and I read the rest aloud as we cruised I-10 across Mississippi and Louisiana. We spent most of the Alabama stretch talking about why Dean Koontz is such a terrific writer. (Conclussion: BECAUSE HE IS DEAN KOONTZ.) Like Stephen King, he has a habit of going off the rails a bit with his endings, but he's such a great storyteller, he gets away with it.
Dialogue consistently rings true. Characters are flat likable. Thrills and creepiness are all the more thrilling and creepy because they're grounded in everyday details and credible motivations. As always, he writes a good dog, and there was even a moment where I was too choked up to continue reading out loud.
PW described Breathless as "a hard-to-classify stand-alone set near the Rocky Mountains that will appeal more to fans of his Odd Thomas books than those partial to his Hitchcockian thrillers." Agreed.
The plot whirlpools around the sudden appearance of two mysterious creatures, a freaky twin on a killing spree, murder victims who refuse to be dead, a cave dweller with a mission and a messed up face, big time Homeland Security smackdown, and all kinds of other stuff you can't imagine Koontz will be able to bring together...until he does.
I don't read a lot of mass market thrillers, but I'm glad this one fell into my lap the way it did. Koontz is a successful author for a few big obvious reasons, but the million tiny reasons that make him a master storyteller really stand out when you're reading aloud.
Off to load his latest, What the Night Knows
onto my Kindle.
, which he'd been reading at the beach, and I read the rest aloud as we cruised I-10 across Mississippi and Louisiana. We spent most of the Alabama stretch talking about why Dean Koontz is such a terrific writer. (Conclussion: BECAUSE HE IS DEAN KOONTZ.) Like Stephen King, he has a habit of going off the rails a bit with his endings, but he's such a great storyteller, he gets away with it. Dialogue consistently rings true. Characters are flat likable. Thrills and creepiness are all the more thrilling and creepy because they're grounded in everyday details and credible motivations. As always, he writes a good dog, and there was even a moment where I was too choked up to continue reading out loud.
PW described Breathless as "a hard-to-classify stand-alone set near the Rocky Mountains that will appeal more to fans of his Odd Thomas books than those partial to his Hitchcockian thrillers." Agreed.
The plot whirlpools around the sudden appearance of two mysterious creatures, a freaky twin on a killing spree, murder victims who refuse to be dead, a cave dweller with a mission and a messed up face, big time Homeland Security smackdown, and all kinds of other stuff you can't imagine Koontz will be able to bring together...until he does.
I don't read a lot of mass market thrillers, but I'm glad this one fell into my lap the way it did. Koontz is a successful author for a few big obvious reasons, but the million tiny reasons that make him a master storyteller really stand out when you're reading aloud.
Off to load his latest, What the Night Knows
onto my Kindle.
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