Life Expectancy - Hardcover

Koontz, Dean R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553804146 ISBN 13: 9780553804140

Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 2004

Synopsis

A dying man's clairvoyant prophesies about his grandson, Jimmy Tock, reveal five terrifying and horrific events, occuring on five different days at different periods in his life, that will turn the young man's world upside down. 600,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Life Expectancy confirms that one of the pleasures of reading Dean Koontz is that he is never especially likely to do the same thing twice in a row. Here he gives us a suspense novel with a supernatural element--Jimmy's dying grandfather prophesies at his birth that he will have five really bad days in his twenties and we watch these with real concern that he may not survive them. Even on the day of Jimmy's birth things go badly--a mad clown loses his wife in childbirth and massacres hospital staff; a bizarre feud between clowns and aerialists is a significant part of what follows. One of the strengths of Koontz's writing is that he works out in finely-blocked detail precisely how his average characters get themselves out of desperate situations by ingenuity and pluck, and without suddenly becoming super-powerful; even at his most wildly inventive, he remembers to be plausible. And this is one of his best books for a while simply because he has fewer axes to grind--this is pure story-telling of the smoothest kind. --Roz Kaveney.

Review:

Praise for Dean Koontz:

‘Dean Koontz straddles the genres, and pretty successfully, too ... this is a read-at-a-sitting novel – with a terrific final twist’ The Observer on Odd Thomas

'Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler' The Times

‘Psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying’ The New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0553804146
• ISBN 13: 9780553804140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 401