He was at the deepest point of his hideaway, four feet more than two stories below Hell. There, he felt at home as much as it was possible for him to feel at home anywhere. Out in the world of the living, he moved with the confidence of a secret master of the universe, but he never felt as if he belonged there. Though he was not actually afraid of anything any more, a trace current of anxiety buzzed through him every minute that he spent beyond the stark, black corridors and sepulchral chambers of his hideaway

I think I read this book when I was in my teens. I definitely did and yet I can’t find any trace of it on this blog. Which means I have forgotten what it was about and what parts of it I really liked and really hated. At 400 pages, it must have been something good.

The start is pretty standard – woman driving ends up in a lake and nearly dies, alongside with her husband who is declared clinically dead. But still “fresh” enough for a state-of-the-art re-animation procedure which re-activates his vitals and his brain functions.

What they don’t know is that the new walking corpse is actually now spiritually linked with a killer who calls himself Vassago (like Madonna – one name and one mission). This Vassago dude seems himself as a creature of darkness ready to serve his one master, Satan, by bringing sacrifice – women mutilated and left to decompose in indecent positions.

The book interrupts the flow a bit to go back to a couple looking to adopt after years of trying and waiting. I loved how brutal Dean Koontz looked at the adoption process

But in recent years, misguided do-goodism in the name of civil rights had led to the imposition of an array of new rules and regulations designed to inhibit interracial adoption, and vast government bureaucracies enforced them with mind-numbing exactitude. The theory was that no child could be truly happy if raised outside of its ethnic group, which was the kind of elitist nonsense—and reverse racism—that sociologists and academics formulated without consulting the lonely kids they purported to protect. […] Sooner or later, no doubt, a marching moron army would secure the passage of laws forbidding adoption of a green-eyed, blond, deaf child by anyone but green-eyed, blond, deaf parents, but Hatch and Lindsey had the good fortune to have submitted an application before the forces of chaos had descended.

That made me laugh a bit as it’s so true.

The story continues with the couple adopting a little disabled girl with a lot of attitude (in a good sense) and how the killer and the couple got closer and closer and closer until they were together.

This wasn’t a fast paced book at all and I grew quickly bored by the repetitive nature of the killer’s life and dream and thoughts and I skipped nearly 200 pages of filler. The ending does pick up a bit and we see the killer’s relation to the husband revealed -> they’ve been re-animated by the same doctor and that’s why they had a psychic link.

They have a show-down, a bit of kidnapping, threats of killing the innocent lamb which is their daughter and it all works out. The beginning was so promising but imagine being in a concert where there’s a continuous crescendo for 2h and a 3 minute fizzle at the end. You’d go home disappointed. This is definitely not as good as some of Koontz’s other books but it was definitely a ride.

PS: In the credits, Dean Koontz denounces the movie adaptation of being a copy without soul of a copy with stuff taken out and without context saying no person should ever watch this.