REVIEW ~~ ‘The City’ by Dean Koontz (5 out of 5 quills)
True to Dean Koontz’s style he starts the reader off with a great tale of a musical family….Grandfather is a ‘piano man’ , mother is a jazz singer and eight year old Jonah is a wanna be piano man without a piano. You see, Mom is a single parent, married to an absent, then back again, no good, shiftless man. Theirs is a tight-knit lower middle class family squeaking by.
Then on about page 100, the weird stuff starts to happen and you know you are back in another of Koontz’s scary plots. ‘The City’ does not disappoint; you’ll love the characters in the story, good and bad. The story is written in first person from Jonah’s point of view and it certainly took me back to being just a kid with very real monsters under the bed and in the bedroom closet. And Jonah Kirk is a great kid; not too good, he’s still a kid and isn’t above lying to get out of potential trouble. He has a mentor who becomes an unlikely but loveable friend when he needs a friend the most.
As always, it’s a chilling, terrifying tale where you hope that good triumphs over evil but, not until the last few pages, will you know if Koontz sees it your way.
My love of Golden Retrievers and Dean Koontz’s brilliant writing began decades ago when I read Koontz’s book, ‘Watchers‘. One of the heroes of the story was Einstein, a super smart golden retriever. I promised myself that when I retired and could dedicate time to a larger dog, I would own my first Golden. I remember back to getting my first; Sadie. I was so excited that I sent Dean photos of her, (nine weeks old) romping in gold and red fall leaves. I enclosed a note from Sadie to Trixie and darned if she didn’t write back.
