Koko [Hardcover]

Peter Straub (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

Peter Straub's most acclaimed and biggest-selling novel -- a visceral thriller with its roots in Vietnam -- now reissued in a new cover style and making its first appearance on the HarperCollins list. 'KOKO! ' Only four men knew what it meant. Vietnam vets. One was a doctor. One was a lawyer. One was a working stiff. One was a writer. All were as different as men could be -- yet all were bound eternally together by a single shattering secret. And now they are joined together again on a quest that could take them from the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York, hunting an inhuman ghost of the past risen from nightmare darkness to kill and kill!

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his most gripping, most hallucinogenic thriller to date, the author of Ghost Story and Shadowland takes us on a dizzying spin through those eerie psychic badlands where nightmare and insanity seem to fuse with reality. It's 15 years after the Vietnam War and a string of murders in Southeast Asia convinces four veterans of the same Vietnam platoonone now a doctor, another a writerthat the murderer, whose trademarks are mutilation and a playing card with "Koko" scrawled on it, was also a member of the platoon. They resolve to find him, for purposes of their own, before the police do. Led by the platoon's one-time lieutenant, who has a cold-blooded killing of villagers on his record, they follow Koko's trail to the sleazy bars and sinister dives of Singapore and Bangkok, and finally to New York where one of them becomes his latest victim. A probe into the killer's grim childhood yields his true identity, as well as his genesis as a psychopath, but in a thrilling climax, the now-you-see-me, now-you-don't Koko proves just how wily he is. The characters are realistic and complex, and the story continues to resonate in the mind long after the final page is turned. 250,000 first printing; major ad/promo; BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'Brilliantly written! an inspired thriller! his finest work.' Washington Post 'Complexly plotted, thickly layered evil! the ultimate horror!' New York Times 'A blood-chilling hair-raiser!' Los Angeles Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: San Val (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417714239
• ISBN-13: 978-1417714230
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,061,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Living Ghosts, March 29, 2001

By 

Phrodoe "Child Of The Kindly Midwest" (Another day older and deeper in debt...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Koko (Paperback)

Actually the star rating should be 4 1/2, not 4, but Amazon won't let you give half stars. Quibbling aside, Koko is a brilliant novel by a brilliant author, a masterwork of horror, a terrific ghost story in which all the best ghosts are still alive.

Straub fooled a lot of people with this novel, most if not all of whom (myself included) were expecting a novel of the supernatural a la Ghost Story or Floating Dragon -- not, certainly, a long mystery about Vietnam Vets whose resolution is ambiguous at best. However, although there is little of the supernatural in Koko, there is a lot of haunting going on here, which is just as it should be, considering the subject matter. One of the big themes in Straub's work, from Julia on down, is that of the revenant, the ghost of the past which haunts the present. Those revenants can be paraphysical beings, such as Julia and Maxim's departed daughter in that novel, Anna/Alma/Eva/etc. in Ghost Story, the Collector in Shadowland, and the Dragon in Floating Dragon -- or, as in the case of more recent novels like Koko, Mystery, and The Throat, the revenants can be actual, living people. Of course the revenants are also metaphors for guilt in nearly every case, and never has that concept been as crisply delineated (or arrived at in as serpentine a manner) as it is in Koko. The Me Lai-type massacre which is one of the novel's central events is where most (if not all) of the characters' guilt springs from, and the past as well as the present Koko murders accounts for the rest of it. The four Vietnam vets, Michael Poole in particular, understand that all of them together created Koko, that they are responsible for his existence, and it is the guilt they feel (apart from Beans Beevers, who wouldn't know from guilt even if he had a Jewish mother) which is their primary motive for tracking him down and stopping him.

Koko is also a novel about memory's persistence, about how it colors our perceptions whether we want it to or not. Straub's use of the elephant as a metaphor for this -- both as a physical presence and on the backs of the regimental playng cards or "death cards" Koko uses to mark his kills -- is a sure sign of what he's doing. After all, what animal is more associated with persistence of memory than the elephant? The fact that an elephant leads Poole to Tim Underhill is hardly surprising -- it is where the past (memory) and the present (perception) meet, and the moment vibrates with a curious otherworldly feel that even Straub has rarely achieved, and which is one of my favorite moments in the novel.

As regards the mystery of who Koko really is -- well, I have to concede that yes, it is fairly easy to figure out Koko's identity, especially once Underhill is revealed as the red herring you figure him for all along. I don't really think Straub was out to create all that much mystery about Koko; having read the novel a number of times now, I've come to the conclusion that this really was not the point. The point was instead to illustrate the twin theses above: how guilt and the persistence of memory can color, and most times ruin, one's life. This, Straub seems to be arguing, is what ghosts do, whether one is talking about the pale specters of the dead or the pale specters of one's memories. They haunt us, not because they hate us, but because we so often hate ourselves for the things we have done. And Koko is a novel full of ghosts, both living and otherwise -- Poole's dead child is parallelled by the dying little girl he visits at the hospital; Conor Linklater loses a job to a man who strongly resembles Victor Spitalny; Tim Underhill haunts the first half of the narrative very strongly, and is himself haunted by the ghosts of his own past; Beevers, though he would never admit it to himself, is haunted by the ghosts of his own inadequacies as the Lieutenant of their Vietnam combat unit; Agent Orange haunts all of them, for it may well be responsible for so much of the evil which has befallen them (cancers, madness, and death). Then there is Koko...the ghost of the killers all of them, even the best of them, once were, the ghost none of them can ever escape -- and which some of them don't even want to escape. That the novel ends so ambiguously should hardly be a surprise -- most of us never escape the ghosts of our pasts, and one gets the feeling that the survivors of this story will be haunted by Koko for a long time to come.

Koko is a rich novel, as full of symbolism and literary allusions as most of Straub's work. It is also a long novel, which does tend to wander from time to time. However, if you are patient and willing to follow Straub on this long journey into the heart of darkness, the rewards will be ample indeed. Just don't expect The Collector to come popping out of the mirrors -- because the best ghosts in this ghost story live in the heart and mind, not in the mirror.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poignant, Beautifully Written Masterpiece!, January 13, 2005

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Koko (Paperback)

Peter Straub has raised himself, in my estimation, from good genre writer to author of excellent fiction with his novel "Koko." This is no light, scary beach read. "Koko" is a complex tale of a group of men who travel to hell and return with demons. It is a psychological suspense thriller that took my breath away. Straub's "Vietnam book" is far different from any other I have read. He didn't have to look far to discover evil monsters with which to terrify his readers. He was able to find them within the minds of his characters, men who served together in Vietnam. At the same time he was able to build a tremendous sense of sympathy towards his characters - those who fought for their country and returned far different men than they started out to be. I am of an age where I can recall the boys, my fellow high school grads, who went off to the Far East. This novel triggered the feelings of sorrow and loss I felt for those who never returned...and for those who did.

Years after the end of the Vietnam War, four members of the same platoon meet in Washington, D.C., for the unveiling of the Vietnam War Memorial. Four men from totally different backgrounds, who chose different paths in life, Dr. Michael Pool, pediatrician; Harry "Beans" Beevers, the "Lost Boss, the world's worst lieutenant" - a lawyer; Tina Pumo, Pumo the Puma, whom Underhill had called Lady Pumo - a NYC restaurateur; and wild little Conor Linklater, a skilled carpenter." These men are supposedly the only survivors of their platoon. They all bonded, once, in the brotherhood of combat. They closed rank throughout the traumatic period when members of their group were accused of committing My Lai-level atrocities in a little village called Ia Thuc. Now they will re-forge their ties to look for another platoon member - one whom they thought long dead - a probable murderer.

A series of brutal, seemingly random slayings have been committed in the Far East. The victims were all foreigners - American, British, French. A calling card was left behind at each crime scene, leading the vets to believe that the killer was one of their own - an ex-soldier known as Koko. The four travel together, once again, to Singapore and then Bangkok in search of a an elusive and wily ghost from the past. Their pursuit becomes, in a sense, a last mission, an opportunity for closure. And it is also a time-out from their daily lives - a chance to evaluate and contemplate change. For their own purposes they are determined to catch-up with Koko before the police do.

I was riveted to the page with "Koko." Peter Straub has created some of the most phenomenal, realistic, and fully realized characters I have met on the written page. They are indeed a complex bunch of folk, especially the killer. The narrative is richly textured - beautifully written. At time I would pause and read descriptions over again, just for the pleasure of doing so and visualizing the scene in my mind's eye. And the story resonates long after the novel is completed. It is a tale of Vietnam and of lost innocence - themes which are not at all contradictory. Highly recommended!
JANA

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange Story!, September 2, 2004

By 

Gary Turner (Powder Springs, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Koko (Paperback)

When I get through with a Straub book, I always feel worn out. He gets you so entwined in the book that you feel like you are living it. This book is about four Vietnam vets who hear of murders in the Far East that are signed, "Koko". They feel this is one of their fellow vets and they strike out to find him. Their travels take them to Singapore and Tapei, Milwaukee, and ultimately, New York City. The path is winding and when the mystery is finally solved, you realize what the peril of war does to a man's soul.