The Other Emily by Dean Koontz (2021) We know this author commands a fan base of millions of avid readers, who snap up every thriller he pumps out......
And we ourselves enjoyed the hell out of his 5 book 'Jane Hawk' series.....(some of them more than others)
Sorry......but we're not on board with this one. Mostly, it alternated between boring and annoying,
The premise, though, sucks you in with a vengeance.
How could we resist? The book's opening chapters combine the creepy horror of "Silence Of The Lambs" with the tantalizing 'Vertigo' trope of a lost love returned from the dead.......and then combines those two captivating ideas with.....
Ooops. If we opine about the third trope Koontz throws into the mix, we'll blow the big twists of the book's final chapters.
So let's go back to the beginning where best-selling novelist David Thorne mournfully pines for his presumed dead, beautiful fiance Emily, who mysteriously disappeared ten years ago.
Thorne believes she's among the victims of the now incarcerated, abominable serial killer Ronnie Jessup, who abducted, tortured and mummified young girls in his basement lair.
Seeking some measure of peace and closure, Thorne's engaged in Clarice Starling-Hannibal Lector type conversations with the vile Jessup, hoping he'll offer Thorne confirmation of Emily's death.
And if that isn't torment enough for him, the bedeviled writer meets a ravishing, woman who's the mirror image twin of Emily....right down to the telltale birthmark just below her navel.
How can this be, David wonders......this stunner Maddison, a virtual clone-like duplicate of his long lost beloved Emily, intrigues and mystifies him with her enigmatic entry into his life and her maddening claims that she's a.....(hold your breath).... professional assassin.
Say what now?
Does that strange admission of hers qualify as sarcastic romantic byplay or the real deal? And what about this other strange guy in Maddison's past, who's been spotted strolling around years after he supposedly dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a supermarket?
(Time to cue the Bernard Herrmann score for 'Vertigo'? Or maybe some typically eerie 'Spellbound' "wooooo-wooooo" wailing from a Theremin?)
Okay, that's enough plot talk. Let's get down to it.....
The book's a tedious slog, overwritten with endless, verbose internal monologues, the kind of blah-blah-blah overwriting that tempts readers to either skip or skim their way through it until they can get the good, important stuff.
By a third of the way into the book, Koontz drops enough obvious clues so you can figure out where he's going with this story. Thorne, his less than sympathetic protagonist, is so consumed with guilt about failing to save Emily and so besotted with Maddison, Emily's impossibly dazzling doppelganger, that he doesn't seem to catch on until the final chapters.
Even worse, Koontz and his hero go completely off the rails in the book's final third, which wastes interminable chapters taking place in the serial killer's old house and upends Thorne's character in ridiculous ways.
The final few chapters, where Koontz finally lays out all the answers and reveals, are so rushed, far fetched and overwrought, they render the story idiotic, full of holes and beyond belief on multiple levels.
We've handed out any number of high ratings to Dean Koontz books in the past, but not this one......
It's a 1 star (*) waste of time.
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