Tick Tock, by Dean Koontz
Even for Koontz, this book is batshit.
Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old writer of detective novels starring the omnicompetent, two-fisted, hard-drinking, and suave Chip Nguyen. Tommy himself is a pretty ordinary guy trying to be as American as possible, which causes arguments with his mom who thinks he should be more connected with his heritage.
Tommy finds a weird doll on his doorstep one night. When he takes it inside, the stitches explode, a creepy demon rat snake creature emerges and types Tick Tock Dead By Dawn on his computer, and tries to kill him. Tommy reacts basically like most of us would (screams, tries to hit it, then flees into the night).
He promptly meets up with a blonde waitress named Deliverance Payne who is omnicompetent (can hotwire cars, defuse bombs, etc), has an absolutely insane-sounding backstory that just keeps getting weirder, believes in alien abductions, can possibly do magic, and has a dog (shockingly, a black Lab) who can also possibly do magic. The two of them rush around madly, bantering and trying to evade the rat snake demon until dawn.
So basically this is horror as screwball comedy. There's an explanation of all the bizarreness at the end that really worked for me--it's utterly batshit, but in a funny and makes-sense-in-context way--and is even thematically unified. There's a bunch of scary, suspenseful, and funny individual scenes. Unfortunately, Del annoyed the heck out of me. She's extremely manic pixie dream girl, and I found her more grating than funny. If she'd been toned down a bit and the book had been a lot shorter, I think it would have worked better as a whole. Major points for ambition, though.
An Amazon reviewer writes, Kind of stupid. But one thing I really like about Dean, he never ever kills the dog.
[image error]
comments
Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old writer of detective novels starring the omnicompetent, two-fisted, hard-drinking, and suave Chip Nguyen. Tommy himself is a pretty ordinary guy trying to be as American as possible, which causes arguments with his mom who thinks he should be more connected with his heritage.
Tommy finds a weird doll on his doorstep one night. When he takes it inside, the stitches explode, a creepy demon rat snake creature emerges and types Tick Tock Dead By Dawn on his computer, and tries to kill him. Tommy reacts basically like most of us would (screams, tries to hit it, then flees into the night).
He promptly meets up with a blonde waitress named Deliverance Payne who is omnicompetent (can hotwire cars, defuse bombs, etc), has an absolutely insane-sounding backstory that just keeps getting weirder, believes in alien abductions, can possibly do magic, and has a dog (shockingly, a black Lab) who can also possibly do magic. The two of them rush around madly, bantering and trying to evade the rat snake demon until dawn.
So basically this is horror as screwball comedy. There's an explanation of all the bizarreness at the end that really worked for me--it's utterly batshit, but in a funny and makes-sense-in-context way--and is even thematically unified. There's a bunch of scary, suspenseful, and funny individual scenes. Unfortunately, Del annoyed the heck out of me. She's extremely manic pixie dream girl, and I found her more grating than funny. If she'd been toned down a bit and the book had been a lot shorter, I think it would have worked better as a whole. Major points for ambition, though.
An Amazon reviewer writes, Kind of stupid. But one thing I really like about Dean, he never ever kills the dog.
[image error]
comments
No comments have been added yet.
