The Key to Midnight by Dean Koontz

 

I learnt something when I googled to find out when this book was written; "The Key to Midnight is a suspense-horror novel by American writer Dean Koontz, released in 1979 under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols. It is considered Koontz's first success." I never even knew he wrote under a pseudonym! I'm also not sure how it was such a success. We were a different lot back in the 70s.

I listened to this as an audiobook - this will become more relevant later.

The 1979 date on this explains a lot in the book. In particular, the lack of mobile phones, which I didn't register until embarrassingly late in. I was at least a third of the way into the book before I realised everyone was calling landlines and using paper files to research things and it occurred to me that we probably weren't in the current century.

Dean Koontz used to be one of my favourite authors. Like I said above, we were a different lot in the 70s (though I doubt I read any until the 80s, as I was only 6 in 1979 and that seems a bit early even for an avid horror buff like me). If I'd read The Key to Midnight first, I'm not sure he would have been one of my favourites. The book is ok, average. It's about brain re-programming and Russian spies which seemed to be a big thing back then, didn't it? I mean, the Russian spy part, I get that. Cold War in full swing and all that. But I'm not sure why everyone thought we were going to have our minds wiped and re-programmed through hypnosis.

Anyway, the nasty thing about 70s/80s horror books is their focus on sexual violence on women. Not just that it happens but the totally unnecessary detailed description. She, the lead female character who has come to realise that she is not who she thinks she is and goes for hypnotic regression to get her memories back remember that part of her reprogramming included regular sexual assault. So the hypno-man makes her recall all of it on the basis that, "she needs to remember the details to be able to get over the trauma". I don't know, maybe that's true I'm not psychologist or hypno-person. But I tell you what isn't necessary... telling it all in the book. It just isn't. It adds nothing to the story and we all know it's just being included for incredibly misguided titillation purposes. It's gross and unnecessary and I only just realised how "normal" it was in this style of book when reading this one.

However, there is one part of this book that made all its overall slight averageness worthwhile. The two main characters end up in London where they meet a cockney. Seriously, the highlight of the book, I was laughing loudly as I was walking along listening to it. Thank god I walk in the countryside where there are few people to here my hysterical giggles. So.... at first, this cockney encounter is a problem due to the language barrier. I kid you not. However, not to worry, Alex, who is the detective and lead male character, has spent time learning languages and he speaks cockney! Cue much use of "apples and pears" and such like. Honestly, it's the greatest thing I've ever read. I'm seriously considering downloading a typewriter font, relistening to the book just so that I can type it all out and frame it. Brilliant stuff.