From the Corner of His Eye
By Dean Koontz
Bantam/$26.95
The prolific Dean Koontz, who reminds me of a more spiritual Stephen King, has produced another page-turner. Slightly slower than most of Koontz's horror novels, From the Corner of His Eye is still a thrilling tale of good vs. evil, weighed down only by a slightly silly ending and a rather unfortunate title.
On a lovely January day in 1965, we meet Koontz's 10th-rate version of the devil, Junior Cain. An unbalanced fellow, to say the least, Cain earns our ire early on by shoving his beautiful, devoted wife off a 150-foot watchtower near their home in Oregon. This heinous deed, which looks accidental to everyone else, catches the attention of Thomas Vanadium, a homicide detective with a penchant for sleight-of-hand. From a dream, Cain learns he has an enemy named Bartholomew, and goes through the entire book — and several innocent victims — seeking him out.
Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, Bartholomew is born into what seems a torturous life: His father is killed in a crash moments before his birth (en route to the hospital, in fact), his mother dies — but is revived — as well, and the poor tyke loses his eyesight at the age of 3. But it turns out little Barty is a child prodigy, with more than his fair share of special gifts.
Finally, in San Francisco, a baby girl is also born, the result of a violent rape. Named Angel by her teenage mother, the young girl shares some of Barty's gifts, and her future is mysteriously linked with his, as well as Cain's.
You'll meet several more characters — some odd, others simply tragic — and enjoy plenty of those improbable scenarios that few authors besides Koontz can get away with. Compared to the other titles in the author's ever-expanding library, From the Corner of His Eye presents one of his more far-fetched plots. But that fact doesn't make the book any less fun to read.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 3, 2001.