The Husband, by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is one of the most successful writers of thrillers in America nowadays, and I have read a few of his books, having thoroughly enjoyed most of them. I highly recommend Odd Thomas, Life Expectancy and Velocity.

When I say I enjoyed most but not all of the books I've read of his, it's because he has a knack for solving his mysteries in a supernatural/spiritual fashion, and I'm both afraid of and uninterested in such stories. Cold Fire, for example, is a fascinating story up to the very end, where he decides it is OK to explain everything by way of extraterrestrial communication and the like.

Due to all that, I now only buy a Dean Koontz if the blurb pretty much guarantees that nothing is going to be explained with E.T.'s, spirits, possession, reincarnation or anything like that. That seems to be the case of The Husband, and I promise that, should he disappoint me again, this will be the last book of his I'll ever read.

It's a most gripping story! A 27-year-old gardener -the husband of the title- is going about his business on one of those boiling Californian summer days when his phone goes off. On the other end of the call is his wife, saying she loves him no matter what and that he should remember that forever. A man then takes over and says he has 60 hours to come up with 2 million dollars if he ever wants to see his wife again. Mitch, the gardener/husband, desperately tries to explain to the stranger that there must be a mistake, since he's merely a gardener and has, at best, 11 thousand dollars to his name in the bank, to which the man answers "I know.".

Before hanging up, the kidnapper asks Mitch to look to the other side of the street at a man who's leisurely walking his dog. The moment Mitch looks, he hears a single shot and sees the man's head exploding from it. The kidnapper finally says, "so that you don't think we're kidding", and hangs up.

I started the book yesterday morning, and read over 100 pages in a day. It's one of those page-turners you just can't put down, and so far I'd say it might be one of Koontz's best. Let's see if it'll stay that way or if he'll manage to squeeze in otherworldly elements in the story.