THE OTHER EMILY
by Dean Koontz
Hair-raising suspense laced with horror and a generous mixture of romance flavor Koontz’s latest.
Successful California novelist David Thorne has been haunted for 10 years about the fate of the woman he loves. Twenty-five-year-old Emily Carlino disappeared one dark and stormy night (this story has plenty of those), and Thorne suspects the worst. Meanwhile, Ronald Lee Jessup is in prison for the abduction, torture, rape, and murder of young women. He claims to have abducted 14 more than police know about, but he won’t divulge their names. Thorne visits him in prison under the pretense of writing a book, but he really wants to know if the “homicidal psychopathic sentimentalist” killed Emily. A dead-on Emily look-alike shows up in Thorne’s life, identical right down to the golden birthmark below her navel. She calls herself Maddison Sutton and claims to be an assassin of “extremely wicked people,” the only difference from the gentle Emily, who would never have killed anyone. Otherwise, they are both in the “highest rank of beauties” and both age 25 at the time Thorne knows them. Thorne is understandably mystified and suspects a charade. An honorable man, he will accept no imitations. He wants the real Emily, or to know her fate for certain. His search for truth takes him to the “hideous labyrinthine cellar” of Jessup’s home, and truly scary stuff happens. Koontz has a deft touch with phrasing that sets him apart from many suspense writers: “The fleecy clouds alchemized to gold,” and “The sun had mined a golden treasure from the western sky” are, well, golden examples. On the other hand, he occasionally shifts his wordsmithing machine into overdrive: “Legions of rain marched across the roof, lightning napalmed the sky,” and “a thousand knuckles of rain rapped the windshield.” And in the enough-already category: “Vicious hatred…psychotic hatred…homicidal rage…must have hated…demonic hatred” are all stuffed into one five-line paragraph that apparently relates to hatred.
Tense, scary, and twisty. Horror fans will love it.