โ Scribed by Dean Koontz
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakesand the pulse ratehigher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itselfand to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever.
What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?
We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now hes standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.
Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitchs wife and hes named the price for her safe return. The caller doesnt care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. Hes confident that Mitch will find a way.
If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. Hes got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But hell pay a lot more. Hell pay anything.
From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelationuntil it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And theres no other experience quite like it.
Koontz (Forever Odd) is likely to have himself another bestseller in this pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich. One morning, Southern California gardener Mitchell Rafferty gets a call on his cellphone from a stranger saying that Mitch's beloved wife, Holly, has been kidnapped and that he has less than three days to come up with $2 million in cash. Of course, he's warned not to involve the police. While Mitch is still on the phone, the kidnapper proves his seriousness by directing Mitch's attention to a man walking a dog across the street. A moment later the man is shot dead. Mitch must walk a fine linecooperating with the police inquiry into this murder without revealing Holly's plight. Koontz ratchets up the tension in a manner sure to captivate most readers, though some may find the ending anticlimactic. (May 30)
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Starred Review It's another boring day in paradise for gardener Mitch Rafferty, planting impatiens on a rich client's lawn. Then his cell rings. It's Holly, his wife, and she doesn't sound good. Someone slaps her, she screams, and a man comes on to tell Mitch that he has 60 hours to raise $2 million to ransom her. Just so Mitch knows they mean business, the man says, see the guy walking a dog across the street? Mitch looks and blam! A bullet to the head kills the dog walker. Let this be a warning, too, that the kidnapper-killers will know if Mitch says word one to the cops about his predicament, and Holly will suffer. Where is a gardener supposed to get $2 million? The sinister caller says he'll let Mitch know; just be a good machine and follow instructions. Despite his terror, Mitch does until . . . But uh-uh-uh, nothing should be given away about this sinuous nail-biter's developments. Suffice it to say that Mitch's intensely warped family, managed according to his rigidly materialistic psychologist-father's theories; two betrayals, one of Mitch, the other of the kidnappers; a slick child pornography entrepreneur; a humane but persistent police detective; and a New Ager psychopath all help ratchet up the suspense and the violence. But Koontz focuses relentlessly on Mitch and, in chapters scattered judiciously throughout the latter 230 pages, Holly. Not for him the flirtation with evil thinking that an Elmore Leonard does so well or the temptation to sympathize with evildoers that an Alfred Hitchcock offers. And yet Koontz is no less an artist for his championing of the good and his determination to have readers identify with it, as this hair-raising thriller attests. Ray Olson
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
Library : General
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780553804799
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dean Koontz's _Odd Apocalypse._ **#1 _NEW YORK TIMES_ BESTSELLER** _We have your wife. You get her back for two million cash._ On an ordinary afternoon, an ordinary man, a gardener of modest means, gets a phone call out of his worst nightmare. T
When Mitchell Rafferty receives a phone call that his wife has been kidnapped and there is a two million dollar ransom, his extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a seventy-two-hour journey of sacrifice and redemption.
SUMMARY: With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakesand the pulse ratehigher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing jo
SUMMARY: With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakesand the pulse ratehigher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing
SUMMARY: With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakesand the pulse ratehigher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing
SUMMARY: With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakesand the pulse ratehigher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing jo