The Husband - Softcover

Koontz, Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034553333X ISBN 13: 9780345533333

Publisher: Bantam, 2012

Synopsis

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Koontz is America's No. 1 author of thrillers [and] The Husband is one of his finest novels."--The Denver Post

We have your wife. You get her back for two million cash. On an ordinary afternoon, an ordinary man, a gardener of modest means, gets a phone call out of his worst nightmare. The caller is dead serious. He doesn't care that Mitch can't raise that kind of money. If she's everything to you, then you'll find a way.

Mitch loves his wife more than life itself. He's got sixty hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything.

Praise for The Husband

"Breakneck speed and complexities . . . Koontz is a master of the edge-of-your-seat, paranoid thriller--and perhaps the leading American practitioner of the form."--The Star-Ledger

"A pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock."--Publishers Weekly

"[A] hair-raising thriller . . . Nothing should be given away about this sinuous nail-biter's developments . . . all help ratchet up the suspense."--Booklist (starred review)

About this title

Review:

It must be tempting for writers such as Dean Koontz to rest on their laurels. After all, they've achieved more bestseller placings than most writers could shake a stick at, and acquired as dedicated following as their accountants could wish. But The Husband shows that Koontz still has several tricks up his sleeve, and that he can still do plotting more ingeniously than most of his contemporaries.

Mitchell Rafferty is a landscape gardener--not a rich man--who receives a phone call that he initially thinks is some kind of a hoax: he is told that for two million in cash, he can get his wife back from the people who have abducted her. But he is quickly given an object lesson in the seriousness of the people he is dealing with--while on the phone, trying to take in what he's been told, it s suggested to him that he looks at a man across the street. A rifle shot rings out, and the man falls, shot in the head. The terror and desperation that Rafferty feels are compounded by one simple fact: he has absolutely no way of acquiring such a massive sum. But his caller doesn't seem to be interested in such niceties--if Mitchell loves his wife enough, he'll find a way. And he has exactly 60 hours in which to do it.

With a premise like this, any halfway decent writer would be able to ratchet up the tension to ensure that the reader is comprehensively gripped. But Koontz isn't just interested in the execution of a precision-tooled plot (although, God knows, he s an old hand at handling such things). What we get along with the cleverly orchestrated tension is a series of killer twists--the kind that Koontz has always been adept at. It goes without saying that a setup such as this allows little room for nuances of characterisation, but that's never been Koontz s métier in any case. However, if you're looking for a thriller that is the purest escapism, look no further.

--Barry Forshaw

Review:

"A pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock."--Publishers Weekly

"Moves like a roller coaster without brakes . . . Koontz is America's No. 1 author of thrillers [and] The Husband is one of his finest novels."--The Denver Post

"Breakneck speed and complexities . . . Koontz is a master of the edge-of-your-seat, paranoid thriller--and perhaps the leading American practitioner of the form."--The Star-Ledger

"[A] hair-raising thriller . . . Nothing should be given away about this sinuous nail-biter's developments . . . all help ratchet up the suspense."--Booklist (starred review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 034553333X
• ISBN 13: 9780345533333
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 464