Quicksliver

Quinn Quicksilver is unique, but not necessarily in a way that is good for his long-term prospects. Found abandoned on a lonely road in the Arizona badlands and raised in an orphanage and tries to live a conventional life, despite the ‘strange magnetism’ he feels pulling at him.

When two government agents turn up looking for him the time for pretense is over, it is time for Quinn to find out who and what he is. In the process he discovers an outlandish, but none the less deadly, threat to the survival of humanity and the small community of resistance fighters battling in the shadows to defeat it.

This is Dean Koontz’ eightieth book and easily sits alongside some of his past hits including Demon Seed and The Servants of Twilight. He shows, as he has for close to half a century, a tireless facility for creating thrilling action and satirizing the excesses of modern American life.

Here he sets his sights on the hubris of billionaires who believe their wealth makes them is not actually divine then free certainly from the tedious conventions that bind the lives of lesser mortals. Also, the blundering ineptitude of government agencies with a license to, literally, print money and the culture of conspiracy theories perpetuated by a debased popular culture.

Quinn Quicksilver and his companions, an enigmatic young woman with the gift of second sight and her grandpa, a sometime romantic novelist who might have been on the government’s books himself back in the day, have between them an engaging wisecracking chemistry. The action into which they are thrown is pleasingly frenetic and his imagined fantasy world created by the uncontrolled ego of someone with more money than morals is far enough over the top to ring true.

Beyond the thrills and spills this is a book with serious things to say about freedom, identity, the importance of having values and the danger of mistaking what you want for what you actually need.