One Door Away From Heaven

Dean Koontz is a past master of blending genres like horror, suspense and sci-fi. And his intense, detailed, almost lyrical prose lifts his plots out of the pulp-fiction pigeonhole.

Never have these two Koontz qualities been as much to the fore as with his latest housebrick-sized hardback blockbuster.

For most of its length the gripping novel has three separate stories - they're thrown together in the final few dozen pages almost as an afterthought.

To the fore we have the sparky relationship between Micky, a young woman in her 20s struggling to find redemption, and a precocious pre-teen girl living in the motor home next door.

Leilani's mother is a drug addict and her father a serial killer, and Mickey knows she has only days to save the girl from death.

Then we have a 10-year-old boy fleeing seemingly-indestructible pursuers who murdered his family and will wipe-out anyone else who stands in their way.

Following his own separate storyline many miles away is a burned-out private investigator, also in desperate need of redemption.

The fast-moving plot zips between these plot strands, stirring in mercy killings, child abuse, alien abductions, government conspiracies, religion and the disturbing "science" of bioethics.

Though the book is overlong, the ending rushed and some characters too sketchy, One Door Away From Heaven is an absorbing read that sees Koontz back on top form.

DAVID KNIGHTS

The Moor

I've grown to be quite a fan of Laurie King's stories about an ageing Sherlock Holmes and his young wife Mary Russell.

Set in the early decades of the 20th century, they are like traditional adventure yarns lifted out of cliche by intelligent, elegant and absorbing prose.

King's latest Harper Collins hardback is The Moor, narrated by Russell and set in the same dark Devonshire landscape as The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The detective duo is summoned by Holmes' crotchety old godfather to solve the twin mysteries of a farmer's death and a ghostly coach.

There are numerous references to Conan Doyle's original story as Russell meets a series of suspicious characters in a plot involving secret army manoeuvres, foreign spies, gold prospectors and legendary hell-hounds.

Nothing much happens on the way to the action-packed climax, except a lot of talking, but I found the book engrossing because King is such a good storyteller.

DAVID KNIGHTS