Bioethics, Drugs, Aliens, and a Dog

“Holy howlin’ saints alive!” How many plots do we have here? How many characters? The wizard-baby breeder or the black hole, the hand, Dr. Doom, Crazy Aunt Gen, the Slut Queen, Toad, and the orphaned boy.

Dean Koontz’s reputation for imaginative stories goes into overtime as he wraps multiple stories into one. He builds several seemingly unrelated stories on complex themes of substance abuse, bioethics, and extraterrestrials.

Plot One
A nine-year old, precocious and mature-before-her-time girl, Leilani, weaves a fascinating and horrifying tale for her neighbors about her murderous stepfather and strung out, unprotective mother, Sinsemilla. Because of her aura of goodness and amazing intelligence, this crippled girl eventually gains support from her neighbors, the beautiful Micky Bellsong, and eccentric Aunt Gen. Her tale of multiple murders includes her brother, although stepfather Preston Maddoc covers the murder by claiming an extraterrestrial abduction. They are searching for aliens, although he has his sights set on traveling to Montana where the brother was abducted.

Plot Two
Concurrently, Curtis, a young boy about ten, has seemingly witnessed his mother’s murder and is attempting to escape his pursuers. Oddly some are truly evil, while others are FBI who manage to locate him no matter where he hides. Curtis is incredibly skilled and lucky as he roams the land more successfully than The Fugitive, while never sleeping nor eating. Almost everyone who comes into contact with Curtis dies violent deaths at the hands of the bad guys. As his story unfolds, he gains the companionship of a golden retriever, Old Yeller, an omniscient dog with telepathic capabilities. We find the two merging mentally and emotionally on a different level with a boy-dog relationship that surpasses the normal. Old Yeller is somehow his trusty guardian as his “sister becoming” and later as his “sister become.” Curtis is truly a Stranger in a Strange Land in this suspenseful tale.

The Driving Subplots
Various subplots keep the storyline moving. Micky has recently moved in with her Aunt Gen, after being released from prison for something she wasn’t responsible for, while she fails to gain employment. Wacky Aunt Gen apparently earned the right to confuse life and reality with movies and fantasy after having been shot in the head during a much earlier robbery. One of the delightful subplots shares the developing bond between Micky and Leilani. We meet Noah, a private detective and former police officer that Micky attempts to hire to help her intervene between stepfather and Leilani. Noah has a personal interest in stopping Preston Maddoc. His sister was beaten as a child and lies in a coma in a hospital bed.

Curtis isn’t right, he isn’t normal and he keeps telling people that. He’s like “Forrest Gump” attempting to find his place in the world as he moves from place to place. He has difficulty understanding the local colloquialisms and his frequent stumbles seem to draw the attention of bad guys. I laughed with his interpretation of some false teeth. His unbelievable running across the country brings him into contact with a set of peculiar characters, including a set of delightful Amazon twins. Scrambling to his feet, Curtis is so fascinated by the sight of Polly plucking shotgun shells from her cleavage with the flair of a magician producing live doves from silk scarves that he turns almost as an afterthought to peer into the store.

We never get into the head of Old Yeller, but this talented dog can apparently type out messages on a computer with a pencil and manages to project his thoughts.

Sinsemilla is her own subplot. Dedicated to the evil Preston Maddoc, Dr. Doom, she spends her days and nights facing “goblins that were sometimes unleashed by a double dose of blotter acid, peyote buttons, or angel dust.” She explores “natural” rituals that include snake bites and a treasure chest of “Alice in Wonderland” chemicals.

Dr. Doom, and his fellow bioethicists, “ceased to be merely dangerous and became bloody tyrants when they obtained the power to try to make the world conform to their abstract model of it, a model that was in conflict with human nature and no more representative of reality than an idiot savant’s math tricks are representative of true genius.” A brilliant man, Preston Maddoc, eagerly used his knowledge as a tool to advance bioethics philosophies and Leilani was targeted for extermination

The Story
One Door Away From Heaven pulls together the themes in a tense confluence of stories that rush toward the conclusion. Dr. Doom is obsessively disturbed by any emotional or physical imperfection or disability and is compelled to eliminate them all, one by one, to improve the world. This included Leilani (crippled from birth) and her deceased brother. She knows he will kill her before her tenth birthday. The clock is ticking, but she finds herself trapped. Somehow all of these characters play a part in the final act.

Back to my opening statement, “Holy howlin’ saints alive!” So how many plots and subplots does it take to create a novel? Koontz did not suffer from lack of imagination, nor lack of details, as he carried me to the end with tension, conflict, some unusual character developments, and an additional subplot. This story was told through the alternating voices of Curtis, Leilani, and Micky, until close to the end. You knew it was getting bad when Dr. Doom’s voice was suddenly narrating.

My Recommendations
For me to finish a book this long (681 pages) it needs to be enjoyable, tense, intelligent, and engaging with believable characters. It needs to be well written with rich language, have well developed characters and a complex, meticulously crafted plot supported by captivating subplots. Dean Koontz delivered. He addresses difficult topics (bioethics, substance abuse, and extraterrestrials) but only superficially. They serve as backdrop and become the suspense’s driving force.

Ah, but, the end seemed to suffer a collision of plots and subplots with the story’s integrity falling apart. The ending wasn’t as intelligent as the rest of the novel. While I allowed myself the pleasure of disbelief as I eagerly read through the nearly non-stop action, the last few chapters were a struggle, in spite of the unusual and unbelievable chase. The solutions and final outcomes were blurred, not so much in their fast pace, but in the confusion of merging storylines. Perhaps there were one or two twists too many. I enjoyed this story; it was a valuable change of pace and nice diversion from the holidays and I will never, ever deny Dean Koontz’s ability to create a terrific suspense fantasy novel.