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WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS
by Dean Koontz
HarperCollins, June 2011
437 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0007326947


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Detective John Calvino is the only surviving member of his immediate family, murdered when he was just a boy by a serial killer, Alton Turner Blackwood. Years later, with a famously artistic wife and three independent children of his own, John interviews fourteen-year-old Billy Lucas in the secure hospital where he's being held after confessing to murdering his entire family, raping his sister before stabbing her multiple times. Prior to the night of the killings, Billy was a happy, loving son and brother.

During the interview, Billy Lucas repeats the words of the man who killed John's family; the words of a dead man.

The similarities between Billy's crimes and the atrocities committed against his own family are too many to be coincidence, and when a dark brooding mood falls over his own previously happy family home, John Calvino begins to suspect that Blackwood's spirit is back from the dead, and becomes convinced that his family are certainly on its list of intended victims.

The Calvino children – his son, Zach, and daughters Minnie and Naomi – start to experience strange noises in their bedroom closets and bizarre visions in bedroom mirrors. A shadowy figure makes an appearance in a family photo taken by his wife, Nicky, and John himself senses the ghost of the family dog in the rose garden of their grand home.

The scares are subtle and successfully build a level of fear in the mind of the reader. Koontz is obviously an expert in the horror genre and knows how to turn everyday objects and events into things to be wary, even frightened, of. That side of the novel works well and builds nicely to the climax.

What doesn't work so well is the sheer level of suspension of disbelief that is required to buy into a hard-nosed homicide detective jumping to the conclusions Calvino manages to jump to. The mental leap from a fourteen-year-old boy murdering his family in the same manner as a documented serial killer to his being possessed by the spirit of that same serial killer is a massive one in these days of the Internet and social networking. Calvino's calm acceptance that a vengeful spirit leapt from the boy after the interview and went home with him is a conclusion based on nothing but superstition, but the detective never looks for an alternative explanation, sinking into the belief of and subsequent hunt for Blackwood's ghost.

Still, it is an entertaining read, a solid horror novel, and fans of Koontz should love it. He is at his confident best here, and sometimes, as Calvino does, we as readers need to take those leaps of faith too and let our imaginations guide us.

§ Madeleine Marsh is an aspiring writer who lives in South West England. She helps run sci-fi conventions and loves modern cinema.

Reviewed by Madeleine Marsh, September 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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