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I had just settled in with Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein when lightning flashed and the cat jumped. Thanks to online radar, I was ready for the storm’s arrival, welcoming an atmosphere of horror, the supernatural, suspense and mystery-all that Koontz-type stuff he and the weather do so damn well. I glanced at the number on the last page, a bit disappointed that the final book of the trilogy was 100 pages shy of the first. And then I prayed for more novels.

I started reading Dean Koontz about five years ago. I knew of him earlier, but had ignored the fiction writer, spending my time reading history, politics and classical literature. If I glanced over and saw someone reading one of his novels on the airlines, I’d smile condescendingly, and then return to my very ‘important’ book. Thank God everything changes, sometimes even me, especially after a good friend handed me Odd Thomas.

What’s most important in the Odd Thomas novels is True Love: the romance between Odd-the short-order cook from Pico Mundo who sees dead people-and Stormy Llewellyn, his beautiful dark-haired girlfriend. In an age of porn-inspired sexuality, their romance is a whirlwind of tenderness, surprise and Stormy’s endearing female pragmatism.

Koontz loves people and it shows in characters like Odd Thomas, the self-effacing prodigy who hunts down killers while staying vigilant for hungry, shadowy demons that swim around future victims, drawn toward impending violence. Then there’s Frankenstein’s Deucalion, a 200-year-old monster who’s aware of his soul, connection to God, and destiny to destroy his ‘maker’-a mad scientist whose replicants will someday replace mankind. Dean Koontz’s villains are terrifying and hard to turn away from, while his heroic characters seem chained to their folly, suffer setbacks, and yet struggle forward, keeping the reader tuned to what’s best in us.

Koontz understands that evil not only lusts for chaos and murder, but for the murder of civilization itself, the destruction of ideas, starting with the idea of freedom. Koontz defends Western ideals when, for example, Dr. Frankenstein’s replicant wife consoles herself with Emily Dickinson after a savage beating by her husband, and Deucalion, and the detectives who assist him, prepare for battle that’ll likely cost them their lives. Through such humble and spectacular characters, Koontz is telling us that Western art, history and religion are not only worth fighting for, they’re worth our study and our love.

Often in a Koontz story the villain’s assault is made upon a person’s free will, like communism’s attack on individual liberty in the last century. That Worker’s Paradise was responsible for the deaths of at least 100 million people, excluding the casualties of two world wars. Dean Koontz knows that history. He also knows that a short-order cook from Pico Mundo, or two detectives, a man and woman, unmistakably tough and unmistakably in love, are sometimes our best line of defense against the tsunami of evil.

Fred Tribuzzo has been a commercial pilot for over thirty years, flying everything from a J-3 Cub to the fastest corporate jet ever made-the Citation Ten. This lifelong pursuit led to his memoir, American Sky. To learn more about Fred’s Christmas book, Saint Nick, and other writing projects, visit http://www.fredtribuzzo.com.

Pennys Creepy Comics Corner – Segment #3

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