Koontz, Dean
THE EYES OF DARKNESS
Dean Koontz
Berkley Books 1996
Pb 369 pages
ISBN#
0-425-15397-5
Mmm . . . want to spend some time lost in a guaranteed page-turner?
This did it for me. The Afterword says Koontz originally published
this story in 1981 under the pen name of Leigh Nichols. I agree
with Koonz in his Afterword that the characterization in this story
isn't deep, but this critic did not find that a big problem here.
The action and suspense are good, and the added mixes of romance and
the paranormal spice it up just right. The only place where I felt
the credibility stretched too thin was where the secretary got a
huge assignment completed in five minutes (ha!).
Anyway, Tina Evans is a divorcee living in Las Vegas who has worked
her way up the ladder from a dancer to big show production manager.
She would consider her life perfect except for the horrible
nightmares she keeps having. Her son died in an accident a year
before and she worries that she is going crazy, fearing that her
subconscious mind refuses to deal with Danny's death. Two small
problems keep interfering with this hypothesis, however. One is the
fact that she never saw Danny's body--it had been a closed casket
funeral and someone else identified the body; and -2- the words NOT
DEAD keep popping up in the most unlikely places, a message
definitely meant for Tina. Is she writing it herself without
knowing it? --her frustrated mind wonders.
The story gets creepier when, at every incident of NOT DEAD
appearing as if by magic, the temperature of the surrounding room
plummets. Even a jukebox in a public restaurant gets stuck on the
words of a song the way old vinyl records used to: NOT DEAD, NOT
DEAD, NOT DEAD . . . as the room chills its customers.
Luckily, Tina gets the help of a local lawyer--by accident: the man
wants to date this lovely lady and soon finds himself a target for
murder. And he gets Tina out of her house right before it blows
up. They deduce these attempts on their lives are connected with
the bizarre messages Tina's been getting, but can they survive long
enough to figure out why?
Mmm mmm good--this is a fast read recommended for fans of paranormal
suspense stories.
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