"Midnight" by Dean Koontz

I am totally on a binge with Dean Koontz - enjoying myself greatly, swept away with enthusiasm for my discovery, I gulped "Strangers", "Phantoms", "Whispers" and savoured last chapters of "Midnight" right now this morning, even mused a little bit what appeals so much to me and I think I know - scary and gripping as these novels are, we know that good guys will eventually survive and win, there is always some sort of spiritual enlightening, Koontz loves to probe in psychological depth behind his characters behaviour and occasionally he even shows wonderfully wicked sense of humour in the middle of all of this. What is there not to like? Where with Stephen King I am usually just drained at the end, when I finish Dean Koontz novel I feel elated and almost giddy from excitement which is very strange after reading what was basically intensely scary novel. Far from leaving his readers comatose with too much darkness, Koontz always makes sure his characters get deserved break and like some old matchmaker from neighbourhood, he insist they find love. I will remember this summer of 2018 as the one when I discovered Dean Koontz.

"Midnight" cleverly combines motives from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as set in a sleepy little town of Moonlight Cove where unexplained, mysterious deaths of simply too many people bring undercover FBI agent Sam Booker who is here to look into it. Tessa Jane Lockland is here to discover what happened to her sister whose death and subsequent cremation was hushed by the local police and eleven year old Chrissie Foster is local girl running for her life from people who are not what they used to be. There is also a lonely, wheel-chaired Harry Talbot whose only company is lovely dog Moose and who is witnessing some very strange things from his window. This small group is surrounded with citizens who appear harmless trough the day but roar and run on all four trough the evenings - the story just gets scarier and nastier with every page, with some genuinely gruesome pages, luckily little Christie is so full of spark and self-deprecating that her humour always makes novel easier to take. Whenever she is in dangerous situation, Chrissie imagines herself as a heroine of some novel and her musings are a joy: 

"Exhibiting her usual cleverness (she thought, as if reading a line from an adventure novel), Chrissie wisely turned away from the cursed house and set off into the night, wondering if she would ever again see that place of her youth or find solace in the arms of her now alienated family."

"As if reading tabloid headlines, she said, “Starvation in the Land of Plenty, A Modern Tragedy, Young Girl Found Dead in Garage, ‘I Only Wanted a Few Peanuts’ Written in Her Own Blood.”

"Young Chrissie, she thought, undeniably courageous and clever, was nonetheless too polite for her own good. While standing on the priest’s porch, debating the proper etiquette of an early-morning visit, she suddenly was snatched up by slavering, nine-eyed aliens and eaten on the spot. Fortunately she was too dead to hear the way they belched and farted after eating her, for surely her refined sensibilities would have been gravely offended."