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77 Shadow Street [Hardcover]

Dean Koontz (Author)
2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (255 customer reviews)

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Book Description

December 27, 2011
I am the One, the all and the only. I live in the Pendleton as surely as I live everywhere. I am the Pendleton's history and its destiny. The building is my place of conception, my monument, my killing ground. . . .
 
The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon’s dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of  madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents—among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager—the Pendleton’s magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.
 
But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge  into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton’s past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a dark tide from which few have escaped.
 
Dean Koontz transcends all expectations as he takes readers on a gripping journey to a place where nightmare visions become real—and where a group of singular individuals hold the key to humanity’s destiny. Welcome to 77 Shadow Street.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR DEAN KOONTZ

“One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune
 
“Koontz writes first-rate suspense, scary and stylish.”—Los Angeles Times
 
 “A rarity among bestselling writers, Koontz continues to pursue new ways of telling stories, never content with repeating himself. He writes of hope and love in the midst of evil in profoundly inspiring and moving ways.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“A master at spinning dark tales . . . Koontz knows how to dial up the terror.”—Associated Press
 
“Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition [and] demonstrating that the real horror of life is found not in monsters, but within the human psyche.”—USA Today
 
“Koontz . . . is a master storyteller and a daring writer. . . . He gives readers bright hope in a dark world.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Dean Koontz . . . has the power to scare the daylights out of us.”—People
 
“Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler.”—The Times (London)

About the Author

Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (December 27, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0553807714
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553807714
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (255 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born and raised in Pennsylvania where I graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). When I was a senior in college, I won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and have been writing ever since. My first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where I was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. During my first day on the job, I discovered that the previous occupier of my position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and I was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. I wrote nights and weekends, which I continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, my wife, Gerda, made me an offer I couldn't refuse: "I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of my writing career. Gerda and I, along with our dog, Trixie, live in southern California.

 

Customer Reviews

255 Reviews
5 star:
 (27)
4 star:
 (36)
3 star:
 (43)
2 star:
 (61)
1 star:
 (88)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.4 out of 5 stars (255 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 106 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading -- but not among Koontz's best, December 27, 2011
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Dean Koontz's 77 SHADOW STREET is not an easy book to describe. On the one hand, it's a fairly familiar haunted house tale in which generations of residents at a posh Victorian mansion are sucked into a terrible nightmare. On the other hand, it's Koontz's little jab at the modern world, which he sees as disintegrating around us, leaving us unprepared to combat the ultimate forces of evil. The house itself, once called Belle Vista and now the Pendleton, happens to have been constructed on something Koontz calls a "space-time trapdoor," which opens every 38 years to suck in the hapless people unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. This can be scary, if a bit derivative (you'll be reminded of THE SHINING, 1408, THE MIST, and even the TV series AMERICAN HORROR STORY). There's an evil presence called "One" (who wants ultimate dominion), and another called "Witness" (who will help him achieve it). There are creepy creatures galore, and a few really grotesque happenings. But somehow the novel didn't work for me.

The biggest problem with 77 SHADOW STREET is the way Koontz tells his story. There is a huge cast of characters, which are introduced slowly over the first half of the book through a series of vignettes told from differing perspectives. At first it's difficult to keep track of all of them; it's also difficult to get very attached to any of them. Devon Murphy is a security guard still mourning the loss of his mother, Bailey Hawkes is an ex-marine investment counselor, Silas Kinsley is a retired litigation attorney who finds himself researching the history of the Pendleton, Twyla Trahern is a country music composer with a precocious 8-year-old son, Mikey Dime is a hit man with psychopathic tendencies, the Cupp sisters are octogenarian cake-bakers, Sparkle Sykes is writer with an autistic daughter - the list honestly goes on and on (and I haven't even mentioned the characters from past generations of Pendleton residents). It's not that these characters aren't interesting - some of them are. It's just that there are so many of them, and the story jumps from one to the other in little mini-chapters which never allow the reader to become really invested in any of them. This makes it hard to care all that much what happens to them when things go crazy at horror house.

Additionally, there is an amazing lack of dialogue in this novel. For almost the entire first half, Koontz's many characters are isolated from each other, each in his/her own apartment. The story unfolds from their many perspectives, with Koontz telling us what's happening, describing events, even summarizing conversations that we never actually get to hear. It's an odd way of telling a story, especially with so many characters involved. It leaves us, as readers, distanced from the core of the action, and kept separated from the characters we're supposed to root for.

Ultimately, Koontz's story is interesting, and I can't say the book isn't worth reading. I grew tired of it, however, which isn't what I expected from a Dean Koontz thriller. And by the end, I wasn't invested enough in any of the characters to really care why all this was happening and what we were supposed to learn from it. "This world," one character says, "is a dark place, and hard." That much comes through very clearly in 77 SHADOW STREET. I was disappointed, however. Two stars for the novel; the additional one is for Mr. Koontz, whose books I have loved for decades. I will always be a fan.
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97 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Dean Koontz back on the crazy train with this one., December 22, 2011
This review is from: 77 Shadow Street (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The Pendleton is a grand old house built atop Shadow Hill, the highest point in the city. It was built by a tycoon in the late 1800s and from the start the families that lived there came to unspeakable ends. Sometimes the bodies were found; sometimes not.

When our story opens the Pendleton has been divided into luxury apartments and has filled its rooms with a cross section of humanity. There is a songwriter and her precocious son, unmarried sisters and their housekeeper, an inebriated former senator who has fallen from grace, a snarky concierge, a Barney Fife rent-a-cop security guard, an ex-Marine and a retired attorney who is intent on uncovering the sordid past of this piece of real estate.

We're grabbed in the first couple of chapters by an elevator that plummets 30 levels below the basement, the Pendleton's former lowest level and then by a sinister black globule that pursues a resident swimming in the basement pool in the early morning illuminated only by the undulating underwater lights. It seems the period of grace has ended and "The One" is back.

This book is Dean Koontz at his classic "hold your breath and clutch your heart" best. A few of his recent offerings have been a bit disappointing but Dean is back on the Crazy Train with this offering. 77 Shadow Street will keep you up at night but isn't that why we read Dean Koontz?
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Wow...where do I begin?, December 30, 2011
By 
EmilyJane1818 (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 77 Shadow Street (Hardcover)
I WANT to like books that I buy. I realize that it takes authors a great deal of time and effort to bring a book to fruition, and I feel horrible when I leave a negative review. Unfortunately, I'm about to feel horrible.

I've been a faithful Koontz fan for ages...Odd Thomas is one of my all-time favorite characters. And having read Dean Koontz for so long, I've come to think of his books ("Odd Thomas" and "Frankenstein" aside -- those are special) along the lines of, "If you've read one, you've read them all." He thinks of so many different ways to tell "good versus evil" stories, that even though the premise was the same in most of his books, they were still entertaining. However, not only was this book not, "Odd Thomas" or "Frankenstein," but it was also not like anything else I've ever read by this author. In fact, as I was reading this book, I wondered if Dean Koontz actually wrote it (the plethora of incomplete sentences was a big, unwelcome surprise).

The plot was far more science-fiction than horror or thriller. The storyline was weird. The suspense was lukewarm. Character development was pretty much nil. The ending was anticlimactic. I'm sorry to say that much of this book was REDUNDANT and BORING; I eventually got to the point where I just wanted to get reading it over with. It was during this time that I read only the first sentence of each paragraph for many of the chapters, and guess what? I DIDN'T MISS ANYTHING.

I guess the only part of this book that I actually did like was the advertisement for the new Odd Thomas book at the end.
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