The Husband [Paperback]

Dean Koontz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2007

With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakes—and the pulse rate—higher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itself—and to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever.

What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?

We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch’s wife and he’s named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn’t care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way.

If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He’s got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he’ll pay a lot more. He’ll pay anything.

From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation…until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there’s no other experience quite like it.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Koontz (Forever Odd) is likely to have himself another bestseller in this pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich. One morning, Southern California gardener Mitchell Rafferty gets a call on his cellphone from a stranger saying that Mitch's beloved wife, Holly, has been kidnapped and that he has less than three days to come up with $2 million in cash. Of course, he's warned not to involve the police. While Mitch is still on the phone, the kidnapper proves his seriousness by directing Mitch's attention to a man walking a dog across the street. A moment later the man is shot dead. Mitch must walk a fine line—cooperating with the police inquiry into this murder without revealing Holly's plight. Koontz ratchets up the tension in a manner sure to captivate most readers, though some may find the ending anticlimactic. (May 30)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* It's another boring day in paradise for gardener Mitch Rafferty, planting impatiens on a rich client's lawn. Then his cell rings. It's Holly, his wife, and she doesn't sound good. Someone slaps her, she screams, and a man comes on to tell Mitch that he has 60 hours to raise $2 million to ransom her. Just so Mitch knows they mean business, the man says, see the guy walking a dog across the street? Mitch looks and blam! A bullet to the head kills the dog walker. Let this be a warning, too, that the kidnapper-killers will know if Mitch says word one to the cops about his predicament, and Holly will suffer. Where is a gardener supposed to get $2 million? The sinister caller says he'll let Mitch know; just be a good machine and follow instructions. Despite his terror, Mitch does until . . . But uh-uh-uh, nothing should be given away about this sinuous nail-biter's developments. Suffice it to say that Mitch's intensely warped family, managed according to his rigidly materialistic psychologist-father's theories; two betrayals, one of Mitch, the other of the kidnappers; a slick child pornography entrepreneur; a humane but persistent police detective; and a New Ager psychopath all help ratchet up the suspense and the violence. But Koontz focuses relentlessly on Mitch and, in chapters scattered judiciously throughout the latter 230 pages, Holly. Not for him the flirtation with evil thinking that an Elmore Leonard does so well or the temptation to sympathize with evildoers that an Alfred Hitchcock offers. And yet Koontz is no less an artist for his championing of the good and his determination to have readers identify with it, as this hair-raising thriller attests. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553589091
• ISBN-13: 978-0553589092
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.2 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (345 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,900 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
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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
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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!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

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

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