This is a thing I've learned: Even with a gun to my head, I am capable of being convulsed with laughter. I am not sure what this extreme capacity for mirth says about me. You'll have to decide for yourself.
Immediately I wanted to know more. I already liked this guy and wanted to know more about him, and how he came to be doubled up with laughter with a gun held to his head.
I wasn't quite sure what category Dean Koontz's novels came under. At work we file them under "Horror," but according to the back blurbs I've always understood them to be thrillers, though of course you can't know until you read one.
I was very impressed with Koontz's authorial voice. Relentless is written from the point of view of Cubby Greenwich, a happily-married family man who writes books and who cannot be trusted with the most basic of appliances. He has bonkers in-laws who call themselves Clothilda and Grimbald and seem to like living in an apocalypse bunker more than in their own home. His wife, Penny, is refreshingly normal, but his six-year-old son is a scientific genius.
Relentless is not at all what you would call a realistic thriller, what with an organisation dedicated to destroying people who don't write the sort of books they approve of, and a couple of unexplained science-fiction elements that don't quite seem to fit in (teleporting dogs, anyone?) But it was great fun to read, genre boundary-breaking, a mixture of intelligence and incredulity. I shall certainly be reading Koontz again.
I went through a phase of reading a lot of Dean Koontz; I recommend Ticktock as the one that got my pulse racing the most. Terrifying, macabre stuff. Maybe I should pick some up again!
ReplyDeleteTeleporting dogs?!
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