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Book Review: From The Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz: Dean Koontz can be a hell of a frustrating author sometimes. Some of his books are superb, filled with imagination and storytelling prowess, driven by inventive central concepts and an irresistible atmosphere of menace. On the other hand, some of his books, especially ones published later in his career (from the mid-90's, onwards), are so repetitive, preachy, and thinly plotted, that one wonders how they could have been written by the same man.
From The Corner of His Eye is one of the good ones. In fact, it's one of the
very good ones. It combines Koontz's masterful ability to keep the reader intrigued, turning the pages effortlessly, with a plethora of imagination and likeable characters and a plot that defies categorization.
The plot: Junior Cain, a handsome young man with a twisted mind, throws his wife off a cliff to inherit her money. After her husband dies in a car accident, Agnes Lampion gives birth to a young boy who grows up to be a prodigy with a strange and magical ability to glimpse other realities that exist parallel to ours. After getting raped by a white man, Phimie White, an African-American young woman, gives birth to a baby girl, Angel, and dies in the process. Detective Tom Vanadium, an enigmatic man with a penchant for unnerving murder suspects with his mind-boggling coin tricks, doesn't believe that Junior Cain's wife's death was accidental, and so embarks on a journey to harass the prime suspect, her husband, till he breaks and confesses. Together, all those people's live are about to intertwine, with consequences that might change the face of the world we live in.
I know the synopsis is murky. But to tell any more of the plot would be unfair to you and to the book's wonders. As part of the thrill of reading this lengthy novel (it's over 700 pages long) is unravelling the layers of the plot one by one, discovering surprises, some pleasant, some disturbing, along the way.
Although Koontz gets on his soapbox one time too many, and the novel is about 100 pages too long, these flaws don't detract from the fact that this is a wonder of a novel; a book filled with stories within stories and memorable characters. The novel is also one of Koontz's most tightly plotted in a long time, with one delicious twist leading to another. And despite Koontz's genre-hopping (the book is part Sci-Fi, part mystery, part ghost story, part love story, and part historical novel!), he pulls it off, delivering a book that has a satisfying ending and is never confusing.
So who is this book for? Fans of Koontz, of course, are the primary audience here, as, by now, they are used to his style and his penchant for juggling genres. But it's also a good introduction to Koontz, a good choice for people who like long, multi-layered novels, and readers who like their novels atmospheric, fast-paced, and well-plotted. No matter what your preferred genre is, this is must-read book, that's entertaining, humane, suspenseful, and immensely rewarding. One of Koontz's best.
