The Face

My good friend Ozayr recently lent me Dean Koontz's "The Face" to read. It's a murder mystery, but with an enjoyable swirl of the supernatural that makes it an ideal book for right around Hallowe'en - the body count, which rises rapidly, helps too in this regard. In short, a rather pointless movie star of the first order has a 10 year old (or so) boy who lives in the star's superlatively ostentatious mansion. Security is headed up by an ex-cop, whose mission is to ensure the safety of said star. The villain is an anarchist who has an affinity for chaos, yet is remarkably organized, well-connected, and scarily clever. The supernatural twist consists of an acquaintance of the security chief who is balanced on a metaphysical knife-edge between life and death, and has a role as guardian angel.

The story is very well done - the book actually finishes well, something that bothers me about a lot of other books. Koontz draws some interesting inspirations from reality, particularly in using the stereotypical (or real, for all I know) realm of movie stardom to rapidly fill out characters; as well as fairly perceptively identifying little things that can turn neighbour against neighbour.

A great read, just fluffy enough to be fun, and smart enough not to be boring.