What the Night Knows

Written by Dean Koontz

©2010 Published by Bantam Books
ISBN: 978-0-553-80772-1
442 pp.

From the book jacket: “In the late summer of a long-ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months, he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy.

Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, re-creating in detail Blackwood’s crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family – his wife and three children – will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer.

As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.

Here is a ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling."

This book is pure Koontz – fantastic suspense, horror and lots of gore thrown in to keep you looking over your shoulder. If you don’t like detailed descriptions of torture and murder, this is NOT the book for you. I happen to think it adds a lot to the fright-factor.

Alton Turner Blackwood was a deformed and abused boy who grew up to be the abuser. Only by killing did he feel powerful. John Calvino put a stop to his murderous rampage 20 years ago but now a copycat killing has taken place. Is John right to think his family is in danger, and why? Has Blackwood returned from the dead? The answer is yes AND no – you'll have to read the book to understand what that means.

I purchased this book at the Albia flea market.