Koontz thriller would make for better movie than read

Dean Koontz: Tick Tock

This past weekend I found myself reading my first novel by Dean Koontz. Frankly, don't run out and read it.

The book begins with our hero, Tommy. A Westernized Vietnamese man in his mid twenties whose bought himself a new corvette. Tommy has just quit his job at the newspaper to pursue his dream of writing a novel, his current project is a Western themed book staring a gun-fighting womanizer. He gets a call from his mother, who asks him to come to have dinner with her. Tommy ends up turning her offer down, and the story begins...

Tommy returns home to find a small cotton doll left on his front porch. Confused he brings it inside and examines it for a minute and continues his night. Shortly after, he finds a strange message on his computer monitor reading “Tick Tock”. At this point Tommy is crapping his pants thinking that someone has broken into his house.

This is the make or break point of the book. As it would turn out; the small doll turns into a little demon that constantly tries to kill him. After a bit of a chase and scuffle Tommy abandons the baseball bat that he was using to fend off the small beast with, in exchange for a revolver... because everyone has a loaded revolver laying around the house.

Tommy finds out that he has to survive until dawn to return this creature back into a doll. Later on he meets this crazy girl named Del Payne. As it turns out she's half alien and her father was a millionaire poker player who is dead. Her mom killed him. Did I mention spoiler alert? Her mom is out of her mind also, she claims to see her dead husband's ghost all the time on the Letterman show.

Tommy and Del end up trying to stay alive through the night. They set yachts on fire, steal Ferrari's and use some BFG's.

You're probably thinking to yourself “this sounds like a pretty awesome book”. It's not. It would be a pretty awesome movie, or a pretty awesome video game. For me, the read was long and Tommy is too much of a stereotype. Koontz made his content really cordial, and long winded with a hint of repetition. Tommy was either yelling out “RUN!” or “Del you're crazy” or my favourite, “What's happening!?” Basically Arnold Schwarzenegger dialog with the personality of a small collection of pebbles.

You can thank me for giving you the highlights from this book and sparing you a few hours read with an extra large with three sugars. I'm in SC1012.

I give this book one out of five.