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Thursday, 15 October 2020

THE EYES OF DARKNESS - Book review

THE EYES OF DARKNESS

Dean Koontz



Latest version sports the label ‘Did this thriller predict the Coronavirus out break?’ The book has a bit of history, first being published in 1981 under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols, then revised by Koontz under his real name in 1996. This edition published 2016, though it must have gone for a cover reprint to obtain that coronavirus label.

Divorced Tina Evans is barely over the death of her son Danny a year ago in a tragic accident when she starts to be plagued by nightmares and strange poltergeist happenings in her son’s room that tell her ‘Not Dead’… Spanning the holiday season, from December 30 to January 2, she is determined to get to the bottom of her haunting. She suspects her ex-husband Michael, but gradually she realises that the constant barrage of messages, all accompanied by a severe drop in the ambient temperature, may only be exorcised by drastic measures. She turns to a lawyer friend who supports her belief that only by exhuming her son’s body will the haunting go away. That, however, leads to something more sinister than she could ever have imagined.

Koontz is a master of suspense and the suspension of disbelief, and this early novel is no exception. It’s a page-turner.

As for he coronavirus, there is a reference to a deadly Wuhan virus; whether that was inserted in the original in 1981, or the revised 1996 version, of even the 2016 print, it is just a little spooky!

Recommended.

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