Dean R. Koontz - Door to December

Ever since I was a kid, I ve loved scary stories. As the years have passed, I ve distilled that love into two distinct genres (although I ll still read pretty much anything, these are where I go first). First there s the gory and rather gruesome crime novel, a la Patricia Cornwell and Greg Iles. Second, and most beloved of all, is the mystery/horror/supernatural thriller a la Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub. None of these authors succeed 100% of the time, but when they do, their work is a thing of bloody, scary, tension filled beauty. I like to call all of these books my Bloody Knife Books, being as how there is almost always a bloody knife in there somewhere, sometimes featured prominently on the cover. I love it. This is my escapist, page-turner reading. And this is my first Bloody Knife review (thus the clever title!).

The Door to December, by Dean Koontz, was originally published under the pen name Richard Paige back in 1985 and was reissued in 2002 under Koontz s own name. The story revolves around nine-year-old Melanie McCaffrey. Melanie was kidnapped by her father at the age of three, and despite the desperate attempts by her mother, Laura, to locate her, she remained missing for six long years. When Laura receives a call one stormy California night, she knows it has to be about Melanie. She fears the worst, as the policeman will tell her nothing. Arriving at a house mere miles from her own, Laura discovers that her ex-husband is dead and appears to have been holding Melanie in this house right under her nose. But where is Melanie? She s nowhere to be found in the house, though the police have made some startling and disturbing discoveries about the little girl s life since her abduction. It seems she was the subject of some particularly nasty psychological experiments at the hands of her father.

Enter Detective Dan Haldane. Dan catches the homicide case, and asks for Laura s help to decipher what her husband may have been up to hoping that this will lead to clues that will solve his murder. Laura is a psychiatrist, you see, and Dylan (the ex), was a psychologist. So, Bloody Knife logic dictates that Laura become intricately involved in trying to unravel this baffling case in which people are pummeled to death with vicious force. When, miraculously, Melanie is found alive but severely traumatized, Laura has even further incentive to discover the cause of her daughter s condition in hopes of helping the girl. As Laura and Dan embark upon their quest, all manner of inexplicable, devious and just plain thuggish plots stand in their way. They must solve the mystery into which they ve been unwillingly drawn before it s too late to save Melanie from her torturers and whatever else is out there.

Koontz writes a compelling story. A bonafide page-turner from beginning to end, he employs the technique of splitting some of his chapters between two tense points of action, always leaving off at a point where something big is just about to happen. It may be an obvious ploy to move the story along, but it works very well. The entire book isn t written this way, it would simply be too exhausting, but there are fits and spurts of it throughout keeping you hooked to the end.

The story itself is gruesome yet the main protagonists are compassionate and caring (a key component to the successful Bloody Knife Book). Dan is a smart mouthed detective with contempt for his superiors and a dogged approach to his job strengthened by his attraction to Laura. Laura is a smart woman derailed by the damage done to her daughter and feeling uncomfortably out of control. The bad guys are truly bad, and each is fleshed out only just enough for us to know that they re evil and hope that they meet an unsavory fate.

The weak area of the book is the nascent romantic feelings between Laura and Dan. They add little to the story, aren t particularly well explored and are completely out of place particularly within the context of the character of Laura. In all other ways she is a badly frightened mother of a badly injured child her occasional references to her attraction to Dan seem strange. The psychology behind the experiments being conducted is satisfactorily explained. Perhaps if I were a behavioral psychologist, I could poke all sorts of holes in it, but since I m not, it seems sound enough to me. And probably will to most readers. I m sure it s flawed in many ways, but this isn t the real world, so it s easy to accept as is.

The supernatural elements of the story are handled well. Strange enough to be scary, not bizarre enough to be garbled and incomprehensible, they add a nice layer to the spooky atmosphere Koontz creates. The Door to December is a fine Bloody Knife Book - scary, with some fairly well developed characters and a sympathetic victim (though, ironically enough, I can t recall a single bloody knife which is fine, the underlying sentiment remains). The violence is appropriately bloody, without devolving into the realm of senseless hack-n-slash. A good choice for anyone who likes the horror/supernatural genre, and certainly for fans of Koontz.


*My paperback copy of this, released in 2002, has a funny afterword by Koontz explaining the use of pen names in fiction. He takes some shots at more high-brow literature, as well as having some fun at his own expense. Normally I would simply skip an afterword, but this one is worth a look.