Fifteen years later, they reunite to investigate a series of murders in the Far East: the killer stuffs one of the regiment’s playing cards into his victim’s mouth, mutilates him, and identifies himself with a name they all once shared – Koko.
Koko
is rich in characterisation, suspense and horror. And irony: ex-Lieutentant Beevers
is the instigator of the search for the Koko killer because he can see the
potential for a best-seller non-fiction book and even a mini-series. There are
flashbacks, some graphic, snatched from the memories of the main characters;
each in their way adding another piece to the puzzle of why they acted as they
did.
Dr Poole observes that ‘improbability and violence
overflowed from ordinary life, and Stephen King seemed to know that.’ So does
Straub. Time and again someone would enter a room and I would wonder if the
killer was there, ready to pounce; and even when he did, the suspense continued.
Some of the characters were not particularly
pleasant yet I still cared what happened to them – well, with the exception of
Beevers! And as the search progressed and the identity of the killer changed,
sympathy began to creep in. For Koko
is a story about a haunting: as ‘if Vietnam was their real life and everything
else just afterglow.’ It is a pleasure to read, notwithstanding the coarse
language and graphic brutality depicted.
‘Terror has many layers’ says one of the characters,
and so has Koko.
This is a psychological horror thriller, touching
upon Vietnam, the ironies and terror of that conflict, but mainly it is about
people sucked into the past. A memorable page-turner.
(Indeed, so memorable that some years after reading
Koko, when I acquired a book for Solstice, A
Dark Time by William Patrick Hackett, I felt resonances of Koko, though Hackett’s is wholly
original and to be recommended).
A Dark Time.
This is one of those big and long
American novels that defy definition, with several characters seemingly
disconnected until the connections are made - none of which seem contrived. The
odyssey we share with Danza and O’Neil is believable and traumatic. I certainly
sensed a layer of nihilism running through the tale. What indeed is the point
of a life? Maybe examining that question in the so-called ‘flower power’
period, where everything wasn’t all about ‘love’, gives us one answer; it was
just as dark and nasty as any other decade. In fact, ultimately, life is to be
lived. This book has the potential to become a powerful movie; a tour de force.
- Nik Morton
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