Book Review: The Bad Place by Dean Koontz

When Frank Pollard wakes up he is in an alley he doesn’t know his name and he doesn’t know how he got there. What he does know is that he is in danger, and when someone, or something, attacks him with a pulse of blue light, powerful enough to blow the windows out of a car, Frank runs.

Safe in a hotel room, Frank wakes and finds blood on his hands. He doesn’t know whose it is or how it got there and he enlists the help of Bobby and Julie Dakota of Dakota & Dakota Investigations. His request: “You’ve got to help me find out where I go at night. What in God’s name am I doing when I should be sleeping?”

Julie’s brother, Thomas, has got Downs Syndrome and lives in a care home. He also has a very special gift, and at around the same time that the Dakotas are taking on Frank as a client, Thomas senses that the ‘Bad Thing’ is coming for Julie.

Whenever I read a book I am forever trying to guess what is coming next. I could never have guessed some of the things that would happen in The Bad Place. Every corner had a surprise around it, and usually some more questions too. By the time I had finished the book I had answered most of the questions wrong.

There are some strange people to be encountered in The Bad Place. There are some strange situations too, which means that some of the questions that come to mind when reading the book have some very strange answers indeed. But when the characters are as well developed and believable as those in The Bad Place it is easy to suspend disbelief, and the answers—no matter how fantastic—become believable. The Bad Place is a well written book that should appeal to many readers of dark fiction, and is a definate must-read for any Dean Koontz fan.