What The Night Knows

What the Night Knows
by Dean Koontz
From Goodreads:

In the late summer of a long ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy.

Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, recreating in detail Blackwood’s crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family—his wife and three children—will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer.

As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.

Here is ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling.

My Thoughts: A little darker than some of his more recent books, What the Night Knows is still full of what Koontz does best- precocious kids and magical dogs, although the dog's part is small. What the Night Knows is about John, who lost his entire family to a serial killer. Before 14 year old John kills Alton Turner Blackwood, the killer makes a promise to return some day when John has kids. Flash forward 20 years, and John is meeting with Billy, a 14 year old with choir boy looks who just blew away his entire family, his crimes and words echoing Alton Turner Blackwood. Now John, his wife and his 3 adorable moppets, sorry, children, are in danger, as are other innocent families.

There were lots of things I liked about this book, but they are also things that might turn people off of it. First the kids, they are all pretty perfect and speak like tiny adults, it's not very realistic buy hey, they are home schooled. Like most Koontz books, this is about a struggle against good and evil, and it is clear what side Koontz is rooting for, and although this book is about a truly heinous serial killer there is still an underlying faith. There are also lots of extra characters, most are not the cute, harmless friends and neighbors one sees in other Koontz books, as these are people who walk the darker side of the streets, but the reader is given a glimpse into their minds, and they are known.

Koontz's writing full on Odd Thomas, and I think it would almost be better to listen to the audio version of this book. There are whole passages that would come alive if read out loud, but otherwise feels a bit cumbersome at times as you're reading. And although you get to read Alton Turner Brown's journal, I still don't know why he picked whole families to kill, or why no one in the Calvino house talks of the haunted feeling the house acquires upon Blackwood's return.

Overall it was a Koontz win for me. It is very violent, maybe more violent than I've come to expect from Koontz, but he stays away from Richard Laymon territory. There's always hope in Dean Koontz books, yes there will be death and despair, but there's still the hope that good can defeat evil.

What the Night Knows gets a Midnight Book Rating of: