I may have mentioned a time or two ago that I devoured Dean R. Koontz in the late 80's early 90's, along with just about every other fiction reader in the era. What I found out later was that he also wrote several novels under pen names, although as time went on, he republished many of them under the Koontz name. (Mind you, there's a whole bunch with a nkui inc copywrite, so I've never been entirely convinced just one person wrote all the novels.)
Any rate, I mention this because I discovered one of the pen named books in the stuff I recovered from mom's attic, and decided to see how it holds up.
As you can see, this is also one of those fun design covers, with a picture hidden behind the cutout on the cover.
Problem being, the Copywrite is 1981, and even if I didn't know Dean R. Koontz was the author, I would have known after a few chapters.
Scrappy female heroine? Good guy who knows military protocol? Evil secret government organization doing something bad? Why yes, all the hallmarks of Koontz at his most technophobic and trying to defend government conspiracy are in here.
We open on Tina, who is producing a Vegas show centered on Magic that opens December 30th. Her son died not quite a year ago, but she keeps finding messages in his bedroom about not being dead, and dreams of a horror comic character from her son's EC style comics. Elliot Stryker, a former intelligence officer, takes her on a date on New Year's Eve. She asks him to help get her son's body exhumed, which is how we learn Danny died somewhere in the mountains around Reno with his Scout troop. However, the exhumation request sets off a bunch of warning bells at a secret agency that starts a chase from Vegas to Reno, then to the mountains, as we find out whatever nonsense is going on involves a totally unrelated development wherein Danny now has a host of psychic powers.
Seriously. it echoes so many of his early 80's plot lines, I couldn't get excited in the action. Particularly when they find Danny and a convenient good guy scientist lays out the entire foundation of what happened, after dealing with psychic Danny Deus ex Machina-ing Elliot and Tina into the facility.
It's silly, but in its time period it was wonderful. in 2025, not so much.
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