What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz

About the book :In the late summer of a long ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy.

Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, recreating in detail Blackwood’s crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family—his wife and three children—will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer.

As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.

Here is a ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling.

First Lines: What year these events transpired is of no consequence. where they occurred is not important. The time is always and the place is everywhere.

My Thoughts: As usual when I read Koontz the story gabbed me at the start and had me staying up late reading to find out what would happen next. Koontz really knows how to tell a story that will not let go until the book ends. This was a chilling read that had me caring for and rooting for the the ordinary people he plopped down in the middle of this nightmare. While it won't be on the top of my favorite DK books list it was definitely a scary fun read.

Rating: B

Links:
Dean Koontz (video trailer)

Darkness Under the Sun by Dean Koontz

About the book: The chilling account of a pivotal encounter between innocence and ultimate malice, Darkness Under the Sun is the perfect read for Halloween–or for any haunted night–and reveals a secret, fateful turning point in the career of Alton Turner Blackwood, the killer at the dark heart of What the Night Knows, the forthcoming novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz. There once was a killer who knew the night, its secrets and rhythms. How to hide within its shadows. When to hunt. He roamed from town to town, city to city, choosing his prey for their beauty and innocence. His cruelties were infinite, his humanity long since forfeit. But still…he had not yet discovered how to make his special mark among monsters, how to come fully alive as Death.
This is the story of how he learned those things, and of what we might do to insure that he does not visit us.

First line: A week before his eleventh birthday, when Howie Dugley climbed to the roof of the former Boswell's Emporium to watch the normal people doing all kinds of ordinary things along Maple Street, he saw the monster for the first time.

My thoughts: This was a quick read and a good one. I liked Howie, the child and adult, a lot. Koontz has always been able to do that for me, create likable characters with good hearts that I want to root for. I felt bad for Howie and the decision he had to make at his young age. This is not just a horror story it is a psychological thriller. This novella, only found in eBook form, stands alone well but I am glad that there is more in the novel What the Night Knows. (I have to get it off my wish list and into the house, soon.) The tension built well and kept me turning pages. The creepiness of the story held on all the way to the end. If you have never read Dean Koontz, this is a great way to sample his work.

Rating:

Quote: "There's always a parade, Howie. When it's something you can't ever join but only watch, then it's a parade"

Links:
Dean Koontz