The Face: A Novel

Ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim is home alone when he receives a call from a stranger with a simple and terrifying message, "There is trouble coming, young Fric...You're going to need a place to hide." Meanwhile, security chief for the Manheim estate, former detective Ethan Truman, is tailing a "deader than dead" body that got up and left the morgue when he vividly experiences his own death--twice. In The Face, Dean Koontz delivers yet another spellbinding and chilling novel, where real and imagined monsters walk the streets, ghosts travel through mirrors, and the devil makes house calls. Stalked by both real and supernatural evil, the bright and sensitive Fric, virtually orphaned by his A-list Hollywood parents, and the brave but disillusioned former detective Ethan Truman, himself suffering from the loss of his wife, must rely on their wits and each other to escape a dark and disturbing fate.

The supernatural lurks just beneath the surface of the "real" in Koontz's novels, and The Face is no exception. Ghosts, angels, demons, child predators and serial anarchists run rampant in Koontz's tale--the unsuspecting reader never knows what is real or imagined until the characters themselves know--creating a disorienting and frightening experience, and one that is vintage Koontz. Whether it be the real-life "agents of chaos" who roam the world creating mayhem and death or the phone lines that carry words of the dead to the living, this is Koontz at his most powerful and terrifying.

In The Face, Koontz has created a modern fable for adults, taking the bones from tales of old and breathing new life into the characters. Clearly written for adults, The Face nevertheless channels the wit and wisdom of Aesop as well as the violence and villainy of the Brothers Grimm. While Koontz's penchant for elaborately singsong descriptions can be grating, ultimately it lends this tale its folkloric quality, i.e. "The June-bug jitter, scarab click, tumblebug tap of the beetle-voiced rain spoke at the window, click-click-click." In this fable, the world is a menacing and threatening place for adults and children alike, and the naïve and uninformed go trip-trapping through life with no notion of the trolls that lurk in the dark. The moral of this story is that, good or evil, you will get what is coming to you; it's up to you to succeed or fail for you alone decide your path punishment or redemption. --Daphne Durham