Dead Good! (Hideaway - Dean Koontz)

Member Name: Ophelia

Product:	Hideaway - Dean Koontz
Date:	12/11/02 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Exciting, nail biting

Disadvantages: None

Hideously deformed and decomposing bodies, a Lazarus-like return from the dead and a race against time to save a girl?s life. What more could you ask for from a horror novel?

PLOT

Lindsey and Hatch are driving along a snowy dark country road. Hatch?s driving is cautious and efficient but even his skills cannot save them from the blockage caused by a jack-knifed lorry. Their car falls into a ravine where their struggle for life begins.

Lindsey is saved but Hatch dies before help reaches them. However, Dr Jonas Nyeburn has been working in the field of reanimation for many years and that night he and his team succeed in bringing Hatch back from the dead (all 80 minutes of it).

The couple?s life should now be on the up, as they succeed in adopting a ten-year-old disabled girl called Regina. However, people who have wronged the couple begin to be murdered and Hatch finds that he has developed a psychic link with the murderer. He soon realises that the psychopathic man will be hunting down him and his family.

STYLE

This novel certainly succeeds in gripping the reader?s attention. From the opening pages your mind tingles with anticipation at the prospect of excitement and tension, which Koontz swiftly delivers in the opening scenes.

Once Hatch has endured his deadly experience the layout of the novel changes as he discovers and develops his psychic link with the murderer. The book is then laid out in short chapters, often alternating between the experiences and thoughts of first Hatch and then the killer.

This technique emphasises how intrusive this disturbed mind is becoming upon Hatch?s own world and clearly illustrates how the killer can inadvertently discover information about the family through this mental connection. The juxtaposition of the chapters also provides a contrast between the good, normal personality of Hatch and the damaged, evil persona of the murderer.

PERSONALI
TY GOES A LONG WAY

We are given sufficient background information on Hatch and Lindsey to be able to understand the type of people they are and their motivations. They had a young son who died of cancer. It was hard for them to put this behind them but it makes them all the more loyal and determined parents to their adopted daughter and it is clear that they will risk everything to protect her.

Koontz goes further to give us an insight into the personality of the killer. There is seemingly an imbalance in the background depth provided between the heroes and the villain. However, the heroes are normal everyday people with the same thought processes and value systems as us. They are easy to empathise with and it is the psychotic killer, who seems to have no conscience, no genuine feelings of love, compassion or friendship who is harder to understand and, therefore, requires further explanation as to how he has developed and grown to be as he is.

Koontz describes the killer?s first murder done at the tender age of twelve when he kills his own best friend. The killer cannot feel true love, friendship etc and believes that those who do are just pretending, that all these emotions are just weapons or tools to be used to get what you want from someone and those who show signs of loving or camaraderie are just very weak and have fooled themselves into believing these emotional lies.

Koontz?s descriptions of the killer?s past help us to understand how he has developed as he has and why he is motivated to murder now. We are, therefore, more able to anticipate his reactions to situations and when he kidnaps Regina we know that she really is in mortal danger.

HIDEAWAY

The murderer lives under an abandoned funhouse, which was the scene of his first killings years before. It is dark there, to protect his sensitive eyes, which he believes can only stand the dim light of Hell. There he has constructed a grisly collectio
n of art. This collection consists of murdered men and women, each then positioned in a way apt to reflect their weaknesses; a religious woman?s cadaver is positioned in a kneeling position holding a crucifix but with her head removed from her body and re-sewn on backwards to represent her turning from Christ.

More than a gruesome gallery this funhouse is the killer?s hideaway. A hideaway from human emotions, a hideaway from the despicable living world, a hideaway from all that is abhorrent to him.

However, he is not the only character in the book to have found a hideaway. When Regina has been kidnapped by the murderer she is put through an horrendous ordeal and the only way she can deal with it is to retreat into her own hideaway. This place she has developed as a protection from the harsh realities of world, from her fear of rejection, from the cruelties of life.

Regina?s hideaway is deep inside her mind. There she has a secret room, which only she can access. There she is happy, she is loved and she has a bedroom with painted flowers on her wooden bed, as only a truly loved and wanted child would. It is to this mental hideaway that she escapes while she is in the clutches of the murderer. The killer cannot follow her to her hideaway and there she is always safe.

RUBBER KNICKER TIME

Koontz has once more succeeded in producing an exciting, gripping novel. When I had got to the end of the 400 page novel I was not ready to stop! I wanted the pages to continue with the enthralling story of this twisted killer, this kind couple and the little girl who deserves love.

The actions of the killer are fascinating and seem all the more appalling as we are able to glimpse into his mind and be close to his movements through Hatch?s psychic link.

Koontz has come up trumps again and this book will have pride of place on my shelves and I wouldn?t dream of hiding it away!

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