Krishna
Dean Koontz is doing repetitive and preachy thing again in this book. I will have to give a good gap before picking up another one of his books.
The narrator is Jonah Kirk with a lot of middle names in between. He is black because his father is black. His mother Sylvia is a singer and grandpa Teddy Blesdoe is a pianist. Both not celebrities and decidedly middle class. They are a black family in a Jewish (and later Polish) neighbourhood.
Teddy’s wife Anita died and then Sylvia and Jonah came to live with grandpa.
His father is a jerk who left them multiple times and by the time you realize that the City, in the form of a coloured girl, comes to visit him, you are thoroughly disillusioned with the plot. Come on, Dean. You can do much better than that.
And the often preachy tone also grates on top of that. Anyway to move on. The ‘city’ gives him a vision of a killer. Without context, he can do little about it.
Meanwhile, after a lot of blunders and an added infidelity, his father is thrown out and he himself learns the piano. ‘The City’ which he called ‘Ms Pearl’ and who accepted it, arranged it. Go figure. And that ‘lady’ is an ebony beauty. Totally weird, all of it. She appears at critical moments, like when he is demonstrating his piano prowess in a community centre but is not there when he wants to introduce her to his mother. Hm.
His father tries to get him but he is brave. His mother is an angel in human form and he will never be able to measure up to him. Mother’s heart bleeds for the poor immigrant family where the lady lost her husband and has no one to support her. You should be good. Tell me, does this sound preachy to you too?
And then, just like the Frankenstein series where the giant appears suddenly within a room without seeming to enter through the door, here is a girl Fiona Cassidy who appears within the boys room which had no access in. It gets repetitive and since the idea is bizarre, painful.
He learns that she was there to stay free for a few weeks and repay by fixing up the apartment she stayed in. She is a bad sort but he had already seen that she is the victim of strangulation in a vision.
She finds him snooping in her apartment and badly scares both him and another tenant, Yodhida, who lives below her. She then leaves after leaving some threatening artefacts (earlier) and taking them with her when she leaves. Confused? Yes, so am I.
He learns that the killer who murdered his parents in a vision and the same man who murdered Fiona Cassidy in another vision are the same people and there are some stupidly exaggerated scenes where he conspires with a heavily stereotyped Japanese tenant and neighbour to learn more. This all sounds like someone in high school has written this book for a creative writing class.
Anyway, they move back to the Grandpa’s house but he knows that his dad and dad’s two evil friends are hatching a plan. He also befriends a sax player who is as crazy as Jonah about music. That man is Malcolm and his pretty (but older than Jonah) sister Amalia befriends him.
They take him to an art gallery.
Next time they decide to go to a bank for the architectural wonder of it, disaster strikes. Fiona and Tilton, along with Lukeman, plant a bomb as a distraction while they robbed an armed truck. The blast ends up killing Amalia and maiming Jonah.
Johan relearns to play the piano and also learns to write songs. Slowly, life turns around with his mother getting a gig and more money in a swanky club and then suddenly, there is an attack on Jonah’s house where the trio come in and try to kill Jonah. Mr Small, the superintendent of the old apartment, goes to kill the great Japanese man who is a good friend of Jonah.
Due to self vigilance of the Japanese man Yoshida he survives. And due to the cunning and suspicion of Grandpa Teddy, Jonah is saved.
The last part of the book is all about how Jonah became famous, how Malcolm found a good position for his music and how Yoshida remained faithful till the end.
Good ending, The story considerably warms up towards the end but remains highly preachy. Koontz cannot help but stand on a soap box and preach on most of his stories.
3/10
– – Krishna