A year after his wife and two daughters are killed in an airplane crash, LA crime reporter Joe Carpenter has all but given up. But then, while visiting the cemetery on the one-year anniversary of their deaths, he encounters a mysterious woman who claims to have survived that flight. She then disappears.
After a series of strange events, Carpenter sets out to find this Dr Rose Turner, who seems to have some knowledge that will help him (and quite possibly change the course of the world). But others with more malicious intents are after her as well.
Carpenter begins to question things: Was the crash due to a mechanical error? Or were there deeper, more nefarious forces at work? The danger intensifies as he gets closer to an answer. He will encounter beachfront cultists, a potential suicide craze, a tech geek who’s also a thug, and a powerful tech company.
Koontz doesn’t skimp on details. The reader must endure ridiculous similes, philosophical ramblings, character descriptions including everything but blood type, and sundry plot deviations. One can take only so much about breezes, flowers, the ocean and the sky.
When Koontz is on, however, the reader gets some phenomenal stuff. Men betting on a dying roach in a beachside restroom. A boy referring to couple of young ladies in bikinis as “bitches”. A guy with “sensuous lips” and an alcohol-ravaged nose stabbing at pieces of gouda with a switchblade while calmly and relishingly threatening someone’s family members (including an unborn child) with detailed descriptions of physical and psychological torture. Koontz also touches on Carpenter’s backstory, including how something that happened to his father instilled a sense of fight that propels the protagonist as he unrelentingly pursues answers related to the flight.
Koontz also has a knack for jacking up tension, for instance in one scene where a pivotal character is about to reveal something critical while pursuers close in. Douglas J. Ogurek ****
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