The Husband [Paperback]

Dean Koontz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers; 1st THUS edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007231830
• ISBN-13: 978-0007231836
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (348 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,321,630 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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

127 of 142 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dean "The Ratchet" Koontz, June 5, 2006

By 

Colin P. Lindsey (Manchester, NH) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Husband (Hardcover)

As I read this novel I just kept thinking to myself that no one takes a bad, awful situation, and then makes it shockingly worse, better than Dean Koontz. When you think things are as bad as they can get, he ratchets down and you realize just how wrong you are. Things can get much worse, oh indeedy. Then, of course, he defies your comprehension and makes it worse again, and then again. Koontz does escalating tension and events better than anyone, and does it with such deceptively simple writing that his stories feel like terrifying roller-coaster rides: the hair curling build-up of tension, the shrieking plunge into depths of despair and hopelessness, then the shocking, violent twists and turns, and finally, heart-pounding and breast heaving, you safely glide to a controlled stop and the safe normal world you are accustomed to can resume again.

In The Husband, a simple gardener is interrupted while working by a cell call. His wife says she loves him and then abruptly screams in pain. A merciless voice comes on and informs him that they have his wife and they want $2 million. He only has $11,000 in his checking. Events unfold rapidly from there, and, as I said above, things slide from awful and impossible, to horrfyingly worse, through many lightning quick, and equally shocking, plot twists. Details about the kidnappers and Mitch's strange family are parceled out in tantalizing bits and pieces which make the bizarre and incomprehensible beginnings finally make sense.

Mr. Koontz has focused on themes of love, goodness, family, and kindness confronting evil, despair, and self-interest in many of his recent books and this one is no exception. A good man, who truly loves his wife, is called upon to face the unthinkable, contend with evil more complex than simple kidnappers, and confront his past in a haunting, complex story that is a well-told, lovingly crafted page turner. This is a story of goodness, love, and hope, beset on all sides by evil, deceit, maliciousness, and despair and a couple who must persevere and face these things head on in order to triumph. I really enjoyed this novel as I have many of his previous ones like the Odd Thomas duo and Life Expectancy. This is in the same vein as those novels. I didn't much like Intensity, perhaps because it didn't follow the same formula as these other novels. If you enjoyed Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas though you'll be sure to enjoy this one from Koontz too.

78 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Always a good read, May 31, 2006

By 

Margaret Dybala "too many books, too little time" (Pearland, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Husband (Hardcover)

Once again, Mr. Koontz has given us a wonderful rollercoaster ride of action and suspense. The story opens with an outstanding scene in which an ordinary, nice man, owner of a small two-man landscaping business, is called on his cell and told that his wife has been kidnapped. A bystander is shot to show that the kidnappers are watching and mean business. And they expect Mitch, the main character, to obtain 2million dollars within a few days to get his wife back. It seems an impossible task. Along the way, Mitch meets with terrible betrayals as we learn his compelling family history, while his wife deals with strange, strange kidnappers. I don't want to say much more, lest I give away too much. But I do recommend this book highly. I bought it at 6pm last night and couldn't go to bed till I was finished reading it! It will keep you turning the pages anxiously trying to find out what will happen next!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Way, way over the top, September 8, 2006

By 

Roger Long "longrush" (Port Clinton, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Husband (Hardcover)

One of the serious pitfalls of the so-called thriller is with the writer trying to pack ten pounds of jeopardy into a five-pound bag. Instead of adding to the horror and suspense, the story breaks into comedy. And that's not good at all. It's also exactly what happens here.

The characters are just a tiny bit unrealistic. Oh, maybe more than a tiny bit--the last kidnapper, for example. He's a foolish romantic with about a sixth-grade mentality but he is a nearly super criminal who is able to plan and carry out intricate actions. The hero's brother is even more unrealistic, a genius with the one-dimensional morality of a tiger. I never believed once in the people, after the first fifty pages or so.

But enough said. This starts well enough but goes steadily downhill into an improbable ending. By the way, what happened to the bag of money? Who ends up with it?