Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Benny Catspaw is a nice guy.
So why has he been fired from his job for no reason and why has his girlfriend left him for no reason?
He has baggage, but given his background, abandoned by his self-centred mother, seeing his abusive father shot in the back, brought up by a psychopathic grandmother, sent to a very strange school with a headmaster’s wife who appears to be part-alien, he is strangely, still a nice guy. But, someone, somewhere is out to get him because he is too nice.
Co-incidentally, on the day he is fired, a package arrives for him in a large coffin-type crate. It is from his previously unknown Great-Uncle, who is also a nice guy.
The contents of the crate, turn out to be the weirdest thing of all. Emphatically NOT a guardian angel, the contents are a ‘Craggle’ named Spike - a protector with some really strange abilities and an interesting line in interrogation/ intimidation / torture and who will accompany Benny and his new girlfriend, on a road-trip to trace the tentacles of the shadowy organisation which has deemed him, via an algorithm, to be much too nice and therefore anathema to their mission.
What Benny discovers, with frequent flashbacks to fill-in his backstory will both risk, and change his life.
This is an odd book. I understand that this is Mr Koontz’s USP. It is not really a crime novel, nor is it really science fiction. It is a thriller but not in the conventional sense of the word. Its structure is an odd mix of narrative in the past and present with frequent interventions from an omniscient narrator, almost as an afterthought, to explain something the author forgot to tell us before.
It is very witty, in places, in a sub-Douglas Adams / Ben Aaronvitch manner, but sometimes seems to be trying a little too hard. Even the character’s names are odd. Dooley Peebles , Col. Talmadge Clerkenwell, Hanson Duroc, Tina Finestra, ‘Fat’ Bob Jericho, Harper Harper, Tyler Looney and more.
I found it curiously engaging, with numerous unresolved sub-plots, more shadowy organisations, an alien conspiracy involving Area 51 (where else?) and rather stock villains. Amusing and infuriating in equal measure it is is surely written tongue-in-cheek with nods to various conspiracy theories. I have no doubt missed numerous local cultural references, as Mr. Koontz is a US author, albeit one who is very popular in the UK and elsewhere.
