In his latest thriller, Dean Koontz (“Your Heart Belongs to Me,” “Odd Hours”) takes on the dourest of literary villains, the book critic. As best-selling author/narrator Cullen “Cubby” Greenwich (playing Koontz’s doppelganger) rightly points out: Some critics don’t seem to notice when a writer of thrillers tries his hand at comedy.
And while Koontz adds touches of humor to all of his suspense novels, he occasionally throws caution to the wind and peppers his narrative with enough craziness to power half-a-dozen Marx Brothers movies, as he did in “Life Expectancy.” Such is the case with his latest, “Relentless.”
Koontz lays the groundwork for weirdness when he introduces the rest of Cubby’s family: wife Penny Boom, “acclaimed” writer/illustrator of children’s books; son, Milo, a 6-year-old who understands complicated science like quantum physics and is highly intuitive; and the requisite, preternaturally bright family dog, Lassie (who isn’t a collie).
Penny’s parents, we are told, prefer to be called Grimbald and Clotilda (they prefer extraordinary names, and even rechristened their grandson). Even the Greenwich family’s doctor is named Jubal Frost, and a restaurant owner is named Hamal — not a Tom, Dick or Harry in the joint.
A perfectly ordinary discussion about the reviews and those who write them — a very funny, very insightful portion of the novel — leads to a revelation. Shearman Waxx, the “most influential book critic in the country,” not only hates Cubby’s latest novel but also seems to take the writer’s success quite personally.
In fact, when a not-so-chance encounter between Cubby and his son and Shearman Waxx takes place at a local, California restaurant, the book reviewer offers Cubby a look of disdain and only one word: “Doom.”
Although he already had his suspicions, when Waxx makes an uninvited appearance in the writer’s home, vandalizing his property, Cubby is pretty sure the guy is nuts. His suspicions prove correct, and soon Cubby and his family are on the run from a writer’s worst nightmare: a book critic who is literally out for blood. That would have been enough for one novel, but suddenly, a threatening sociopath is followed by a secret cabal, a Victor Hugo-type cripple and. . . a strange turn of events that would even make “The X-Files'” Fox Mulder blush.
So after establishing a bit of verisimilitude — in the world of quirky writers, and eccentric small-town types — and asking readers to believe in the extraordinary wit and resourcefulness of the entire Greenwich family, Koontz jumps the shark. Here’s the problem with tossing in “X-Files” or “Lost”-style weirdness: The writer runs the danger that some (if not all) of the audience will find the action so over the top, so cartoon-like, that the peril posed to his heroes no longer seems real. If the villains are cartoonish, their threats become equally laughable.
While Koontz should be commended for breaking formula and trying something different, “Relentless” feels like the result of combining a conspiracy theorist’s nightmare with an episode of “The Gilmore Girls”: too cute by half. Just as bad, an interesting debate and underlying theme — the gulf between “serious” and popular fiction — gets lost amid the growing absurdities.
All the silliness in “Relentless” ends up smashing any sustained suspension of disbelief, like an anvil flattening a coyote in a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Dorman T. Shindler lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Fiction
Relentless
by Dean Koontz
$27.
