Night Chills By Dean Koontz

Night Chills
By Dean Koontz
Copyright 1976

Paul Annendale takes his children, Mark and Rya, camping near the small, New England town of Black Water. Little does he – or the residents of Black Water – know that the town has been brainwashed by an evil corporate mastermind as a test case for eventual world domination.

Scientist Ogden Salsbury and millionaire Leonard Dawson have concocted a scheme to pollute the town’s water supply with a serum that will make the residents particularly susceptible to subliminal advertising. Then, using various media purchased by a dummy corporation, inculcate the residents with subliminal suggestions through advertising and messages inserted in movies, opening their mind to absolute control using simple keywords.

Young Mark stumbles onto Salsbury toying with one of the town’s residents and pays the price. Paul, his girlfriend and her father search the town for Mark and learn the horrible secret of Salsbury’s domination. Untainted by exposure to the poisoned water, they are the only ones left in Black Water that can fight the evil.

This was an early entry by Dean Koontz and it is strongly plotted. It moves along quite nicely and has a little love story as a subplot. Koontz certainly can tell a story and his use of flashback to explain the development of the serum and the program to dominate the world is particularly effective.

What stands out strongly in this book is the erotica. This has always been a Koontz strength and what sets him apart from most other writers in the horror genre. It is entirely sadistic with Ogden Salsbury either dominating or thinking about dominating women sexually with his mind control technique.

I’ve read reviews – mostly by women – who feel this is gratuitous and unnecessary sexploitation in the novel. I disagree wholeheartedly. It establishes the effectiveness of Salsbury’s programming. It shows the reader just how strong and effective it is. Without these two or three scenes, the novel would have been rather flat and dull.

The characters are a bit thin. But they do reflect a writer still honing his craft. Paul is well developed as the pining widower looking to move on with his life with a new woman. But Ogden Salsbury is just a bit cartoonish. He really lacks complexity. All we know is that he has mommy issues and horrible fear and hatred of women. Koontz doesn’t give us much more than that. But it’s enough to make this short novel work.

This is one of the earliest Koontz novels I’ve read and, to my knowledge, this is the first use of a frequent Koontz villain – the evil corporation. Koontz employs this device again and again in many books with varying results. It worked well in the novel, Midnight. Here, it works on a superficial level as a vehicle for a mad villain. Again, we are talking about a fairly short novel. So, it only takes the bare essential elements to make it work.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Dean Koontz. I enjoy his early work much, much more than his later stuff. He’s always been a bit of a novel factory. But, in his later work, the heroes were all great overachievers and there was always a dog. I like dogs well enough. But one dog novel is enough for anyone.

That said, Night Chills is a work by a young author who was not yet trapped in a formula or recycling characters. It is thin and short. But sometimes, that can be fun and Night Chills was an easy, fun read.

Watchers By Dean Koontz

Watchers
By Dean Koontz
Copyright 1987

Writing fiction from an animal’s point of view is a tricky proposition for an author. It is difficult to do well and easy to do badly and very easy to do very badly. Assigning the human capacity to think and reason is the biggest pitfall. Some have done it well like Stephen King did with Cujo. Koontz does it quite well in Watchers.

Travis Cornell is a former Delta Force unit alienated from life and the human race by a series of tragic events in his life. One day while hiking alone, he finds a stray dog running along a desert trail. The dog warns Travis that he is in danger and Travis and the dog flee the desert.

Travis soon learns that this is no ordinary Golden Retriever. This dog is special and the government is taking a strong interest in finding it.

Nora Devon has lived a sheltered life, hardly ever venturing into public. Repressed by her aunt that raised her, Nora gets nervous at the prospect of any human contact. After servicing her television, a television repairman starts to harass Nora, calling her and making suggestive comments and tormenting her. Nora lives her life in fear.

Vince Nasco is a Mafia hitman who delights in killing. He believes he is able to absorb the life force of those he kills and is striving for immortality. He is hired by the Soviets to kill scientists associated with Banodyne Laboratories – the lab that created the Golden Retriever named Einstein by his new master, Travis.

The lab also created another intelligent animal. While Einstein is an exceptionally intelligent, faithful, loyal dog, the creature known as The Outsider is a ruthless killing machine. The Outsider is loose as well, slaughtering people and animals across southern California with one goal – to find Einstein and kill him.

One day, while walking with Travis in a park, Einstein saves Nora from her stalker and Travis and Nora are drawn together. They both fall in love with Einstein and learn to communicate with him to unlock his secrets.

While slaughtering Banodyne scientists, Vince learns of Einstein and his wondrous abilities. Determined to find the dog, capture him, and sell him to the highest bidder, Vince also pursues the dog across southern California.

Travis and Nora fall in love and are married. When they return from their honeymoon, they find their home destroyed and Travis’s landlord dead at the hands of the other. They flee, assume false identities and move to northern California to flee from the federal government who is tracking both the Outsider and Einstein in hopes of capturing them.

Vince and the Outsider converge on the Cornell home at the same time and Travis, Nora, and Einstein are forced to fight for their lives against a sadistic mass murderer and a genetically engineered killing machine.

Watchers launched the career of Dean Koontz who had many books in print, but remained under the radar of most readers. Upon its publication, Koontz became a national bestseller of books and developed into a novel machine, publishing two – sometimes three novels a year for more than 30 years.

Too often, Dean Koontz is lazy with his character development. He often relies on a template character of the overachiever who overcome great childhood obstacles but is lonely in life. Watchers is different and that is part of what makes it special. When Koontz opens his book, Travis comes across as gruff, even callous. But as his relationship with Einstein and Nora develops, Koontz peals the onion to reveal a former Delta Force killer who is a broken human being on the mend.

Nora has a wonderful character arc. Koontz introduces her as a mouse of a woman. But she is no caricature. Early on Koontz reveals her as a complex woman. As she confronts her tormentor and develops a relationship with Travis and Einstein, she evolves nicely into a strong woman capable of violence to protect home and family.

Koontz’s treatment of the Outsider is masterful. As with his heroes, Koontz is capable of laziness with his villains and monsters as well and they often emerge as Snidely Whiplash like characters. The Outsider is a genetically engineered mutant bred for no purpose but killing. That would have been enough to sustain the plot. But Koontz makes the effort to make the Outsider tragic and almost sympathetic. This extra touch added tremendously to my enjoyment of Watchers.

Kudos to Koontz for writing an intelligent animal that didn’t want to make me gag. He did not write form Einstein’s point of view which helped by not having us read the dog’s thoughts and internal dialogue even though Einstein was capable of thinking, reasoning, and even reading. Einstein’s abilities are revealed slowly to the reader (and to Travis). This helps develop Einstein. While his abilities are fixed at the beginning of the story, the slow reveal makes it more plausible. As I stated, this is easy to do badly. Koontz did it masterfully and made Einstein as loveable as Old Yeller.

Watchers is well plotted with a masterful ebb and flow of story and character development scenes. The term page turner is used too often in rating and reviewing books, but Watchers was a compelling read. Never did I feel a scene was wasted. Every paragraph lent itself to the story.

The book is not without some small shortcomings. Koontz really works hard at developing the personal relationship between the county sheriff and the federal agent. He did it well and the reader felt the bond between the two and felt empathy for each. But both got short shrift from Koontz. The sheriff disappeared from the story without any resolution other than a final conversation in the final chapter of the book. The federal agent has an epiphany about the direction of his life (a writing cheat as egregious as ex deus machina) and falls away from the story until the final chapter where he serves no purpose other than to bring the story to a close. These characters deserved something better.

Vince’s aversion to sexual behavior is put out there before the reader, but never explained. Vince received enough character development to make him an effective antagonist. But deeper exploration of this facet of his personality which seemed important to Koontz since he brought it up so many times, would have made Vince a stronger character.

I would have enjoyed just a chapter or two – perhaps a prologue from the Outsider’s point of view. He was such a fascinating antagonist that just a taste of his interior dialogue would have been welcomed. Too much would have weakened the character and Koontz was careful to avoid that. But it would have been nice to know just a little more about this emotionally complex creature.

Koontz is always hit or miss with me. I love some of his better books like Watchers, Phantoms, Strangers, Night Chills and The Bad Place while absolutely loathing some of his later work like Cold Fire, Winter Moon, and Seize the Night I could not suffer through.

Watchers was a delight to read and ranks with Koontz’s best work. Great characters and a well told story always makes for a good book. Watchers is a damn good book.

The Bad Place By Dean Koontz

The Bad Place
By Dean Koontz
Copyright 1990

Frank Pollard appears in a Los Angeles neighborhood with no memory of who he is, where he’s been, or who is pursuing him. He only knows that somebody or something is following him and trying to kill him.

He hot wires a car and flees. As he drive, his pursuer attacks the car, blowing out its tires. He continues to allude this mysterious presence and hides out in a low rent motel. He is carrying a dufflebag. He opens that bag to find more than $100,00 in cash and several red gems.

He decides to hire some private investigators to help him figure out who he is, where he comes from, why he has all this money, and finally, who wants to kill him. He hires Bobby and Julie Dakota, high tech private eyes whose clients consist mostly of industrial and high tech espionage. He shows the cash, the jewels, and several fake ID’s he has in his possession. They start there research.

Meanwhile in a rundown cape cod near the Santa Barbara coast, Candy Pollard lives with his two sisters, Violent and Verbina. Candy is one strange and evil being. He enjoys dining on the blood of all living beings – especially humans. He lives for revenge on his brother, Frank, who killed his beloved mother eleven years earlier. Candy is able to teleport himself to various locations at will and is gifted with superhuman strength.

He holds a strong bond to his dead mother who use to cut her hands and occasionally her breast to let him suckle on her blood. Candy was an instrument of God, he learns from his mother. He must remain pure and chaste and can only kill those who have done him or her wrong. He must also protect his strange sisters.

Verbina and Violet are twins. They live an isolated existence tied to each other emotionally and sexually. They commune with a pack of cats that roam their property. Those cats serve as their eyes and ears, a relationship like witches and their familiars. Verbina tells Candy that Frank has been back to their house, looking in on them and has killed one of their cats. They want revenge on Frank for the death of their cat.

Another story line develops in Julie Dakota’s brother, Thomas, who has Down’s Syndrome and lives in an assisted living community. Shortly after taking Pollard’s case, Bobby and Julie visit Thomas. After leaving, Thomas finds he has a strange, psychic connection to an evil being he is sure is going to harm his sister. Thomas does what he can to find out who or what this being is and where and what the Bad Place is in which he dwells.

The Dakotas check Pollard into a hospital for observation and place a watch on him. They begin researching the various identifications provided by Pollard. They find that the people were once real, but had died. Following their deaths, tragedy struck the homes in which they dwelled. One man’s family was killed in a fire. Another was murdered. Candy killed them in his pursuit of Frank.

While Julie and Bobby are doing their research, Frank Pollard disappears into thin air from his hotel room. The Dakotas return to the hospital and wait for Frank to return. He returns a few hours later, carrying more money, more gems, and a companion – an insect or arachnid (it has an insect’s body supported by eight legs). It becomes clear after this latest trip that his travels are taking a physical and mental toll on Frank Pollard. When he materializes, his clothes are not put back together quite right, with bits of his shirt woven into his pants and the zipper of his pants melded into his shoes. He is convinced that each time he reconstitutes his body, there are parts not being put back together quite right.

The Dakotas learn that the jewels are actually exceptionally rare red diamonds that are too valuable to put a price on. The insect, they learn, is nothing of this earth. It’s primary function is to consume minerals and produce gems as waste.

Frank is brought back to the Dakotas offices as they conduct more computer research on his origins. They finally find where he was born and where he resided in the small home in Santa Barbara. As they are discussing this, Frank winks out of existence. This time, he takes Bobby with him.

Bobby and Frank travel to various places that Frank has lived and hid in the eleven years since he killed his mother. While traveling, Frank remembers killing his mother and Candy’s bloodlust for him. They pop in and pop out of various homes on various continents before landing on what appears to be another planet. On that planet are hundreds of the large, foreign insects Frank brought back with him. Among them are thousands of the priceless red gems. While on this foreign planet, Bobby loses physical contact with Frank and Frank disappears, leaving Bobby behind.

Bobby is desperate and scared. He observes an alien spaceship monitoring him and the insects seem to be mounting an attack. Before they can attack, however, Frank returns and grabs him. From there, they are transported to a doctor’s study. The doctor appears quite surprised, and them quite angry, to see Frank. Before he can say much, they disappear again to reappear in the Dakota’s offices.

Bobby has the name of the doctor he is sure is in Santa Barbara. They also have the address of the Pollard home. Bobby and Julie set out for Santa Barbara to see the Pollard home and find the doctor.

Meanwhile, Thomas has been using his psychic abilities to spy on Candy as much as possible, but he fears him. He is only able to catch quick glimpses of Candy and his activities before Candy becomes aware of him. Thomas desperately fears getting caught. Finally, he lingers just a little two long and Candy captures his mind. From Thomas, Candy learns that Thomas has some connection to Frank.

Candy teleports to Thomas’ room at the assisted living center. He kills Thomas’ roommate and tries to interrogate Thomas who does not have the mental capacity to understand what has happened or answer the questions. Candy kills Thomas and then tries to find psychic links to Frank in Thomas’ room. Finally, he learns about the Dakotas and their efforts to help Frank.

From Thomas’ room, Candy transports himself to the Dakota and Dakota agency and kills the people there. He then goes on to a Dakota employee’s home and kills the employee’s wife. He learns that Bobby and Julie are en route to Santa Barbara, so he returns home to wait for Candy.

The Pollards learn of the death of their friends and family. Now, they are more determined to find Frank’s brother and mete out justice. They find the doctor who tells them the strange tale of the Pollard family.

Frank and Candy’s grandfather had amassed a small fortune in the motion picture industry. He died in an accident and his daughter was left in the care of her uncle who molested her and eventually impregnated her. The doctor attended the birth of Roselle Pollard who was born a true hermaphrodite with fully functional sex organs of both genders.

Fifteen years later, Roselle returns to the doctor, she herself pregnant. She delivers Frank whom the doctor is disappointed to see, is perfectly normal. A couple years later, she returns, pregnant again. This time she delivers a boy with a strange abnormality. He is born with four testicles and no penis. This creature, the doctor tells him, would be loaded with testosterone to help him develop incredible strength. He would also be mean and evil, with no outlet for sexual frustration. Two years later, she returns and delivers the twin girls.

At Frank’s birth, Roselle tells the doctor that the birth is a miracle, for Frank and her children that followed, were born of a virgin. She impregnated herself using the sexual equipment as her disposal.

While they are having this discussion, Verbina and Violet’s cats are stalking and watching the doctor. They find the Dakotas there and Candy teleports in. He seizes Julie and demands that Bobby summon Frank. Frank, who has been traveling, finally arrives. His constant travels have left him markedly deformed, with partial insects and red jewels now being incorporated into his body. Candy tells Frank that he is taking Julie to their house. If Frank will accompany Candy to the house and sacrifice himself in atonement for killing their mother, he will let Julie live. He then disappears with Julie.

Bobby and the nearly dead Frank Pollard race by car to the Pollard residence. When they get there, they find that, in his rage, he has slaughtered his sisters. Julie is held hostage. Bobby implores Frank to confront his brother and his troubles. The two engage and begin traveling. They pop in and out of the kitchen. Each time they return, they are more and more closely amalgamated into one melded being bearing little resemblance to anything human. Bobby and Julie set fire to the home and kill the living lump of flesh and bone that used to be Frank and Candy Pollard.

The book concludes with the Dakotas living out their dream of residing on the coast and relaxing in their hobbies. They have the cash and jewels left to them by Frank. They also discovered a large cache of cash in the Pollard home, acquired by Frank over the years to support the family. It is just compensation, they rationalize, for the death of Thomas and their friends.

The Bad Place is one of my favorite Dean Koontz novels. With me, Koontz is hit or miss. He has written some compelling tales that have engaged my imagination like few others. Such books as Twilight Eyes, Watchers, House of Thunder, Phantoms, and The Door to December, are fun books to read. Others, such as the unreadable Seize the Night, Dragon Tears, and Winter Moon make me leery of picking up other Dean Koontz books.

One of the chief complaints of Koontz’s writing is that his characters are all the same. In most of his books, the characters are overachievers who have overcome horrible childhoods to succeed tremendously in whatever industry it is they pursue. They always do so at the expense of friends and family. None of this shows up in The Bad Place. In this book, Koontz steps away from his templated writing and develops original characters set in an original story.

A device that Koontz often employs effectively is the splintered story telling with different characters, unattached to each other, beset with similar problems. He usually is quite adept at engaging the reader into thinking and analyzing what these characters all have in common. He usually brings the story lines together into a exciting conclusion, as he does in The Bad Place.

Koontz provides few clues as to what links his various story lines together. Instead he weaves new anecdotes that only increase the mystery. As the book climaxes is when Koontz ties his story lines together.

One area where Koontz surpasses Stephen King is his ability to write erotica. King seldom uses erotica in his stories. Koontz does it and almost always does it well. In The Bad Place, the seductive twins who are primarily attracted to each other is well crafted erotica.

Then there is Candy, who so abhors sex and sexual arousal (for obvious reasons) that he washes his privates (such as they are) with a special mitt so he won’t have to touch them.

Dean Koontz is a writing machine who cranks out at least one novel and usually two novels a year. Being a novel factory probably detracts from the quality of his work. When Koontz is on, you can understand why he’s one of the better selling novelists of modern times. When he’s off (which is more often than not lately), you end up feeling foolish for having picked up the book. I can recall only a couple occasions when a book was so bad that I just could not find the will to finish it. One of these was Seize the Night.

However, Koontz is on his game in The Bad Place. He deviates from his formulaic characters and develops original thoughtful characters. The mystery of Frank Pollard and his strange abilities deepens throughout the book until the apocalyptic meeting at the doctor’s house. The final battle between Frank and Candy is riveting.

Those who fear reading Koontz for fear of stepping into a pile of crap like Seize the Night can safely pick up The Bad Place and know they are headed for a good reading experience.