Yes, the language is blunt, but the message is clear. The Russians and the Americans knew the game that was being played. DeMille takes a slice of history and gives us a true and honest account of what happened behind the Iron Curtain, showing what our people faced day in and day out as they tried to end the Cold War.

  The whole concept of Miss Ivanova’s Charm School is terrifying and especially relevant in our current war on terror. But could it really work? Could something like this actually happen? I’m afraid the answer is yes.

  Once Colonel Hollis is held captive in the school, he has a conversation with one of the American POWs, a former instructor at the school who explains the essential and existential theme of this book: “[The Charm School] took the spycraft ideal of deep cover to its ultimate realization; it assaulted the very notion of identity that all human beings took for granted.”

  The concept is simple: by teaching Russian spies to become Americans and slipping them into our society, the Russians could at last win the Cold War . Yet elements of the U.S. government want to keep the discovery of the Charm School a secret lest improving relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R. be compromised. The terror of DeMille’s novel is not in the idea that a Charm School could be created, but that one already had been and that nothing was being done about it. Could it happen? Of course it could.

  The vividness of The Charm School’s setting must be mentioned. Russia is, for many of us, a foreign place and was especially so when this book was written. The average American citizen wasn’t taking vacations in Moscow; travel was limited to official business. The Russian people were starved—physically, emotionally, spiritually—and DeMille captures their heartache so eloquently, so perfectly, that you feel you’re on the streets of Moscow.

  Nelson DeMille is an author who isn’t afraid to move readers toward great heights and dark abysses. A master of extended action sequences, he is also a beacon of intellectual stimulation through the thriller form, and an author whose work makes a lasting impression on the reader.

  J.T. Ellison is the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, and The Cold Room. A former White House staffer, she moved to Nashville, and began research on her passions: forensics and crime. She has worked extensively with the Metro Nashville Police, the FBI, and various other law enforcement organizations to research her novels. She lives with her husband and a poorly trained cat. Her short story, “Prodigal Me,” appeared in the ITW-sponsored anthology,Killer Year: Stories to Die For.

  87

  Dean Koontz’s

  WATCHERS (1988)

  Lee Thomas

  Dean Koontz (1945–) is one of the most prolific and popular of contemporary American authors. In a career spanning four decades, he has published over ninety novels under his name and a variety of pseudonyms. As a senior in college, he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and became determined to make a living from storytelling. Early on, he worked a variety of day jobs, refining his craft evenings and weekends, until his wife, Gerda, offered to support him while he pursued a writing career in earnest. His first novel,Star Quest, was published in 1968, and he published extensively since with as many as nine novels released in a single year. His books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and have sold 375,000,000 copies to date. Eleven of his novels rose to number one on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list, and fourteen of his books rose to the top spot on the paperback list. He and Gerda maintain a home in Southern California, where many of his novels are set.

  Nearly two decades after the publication of his first novel, Dean Koontz released Watchers, which many fans and critics consider his finest book. Not only did Watchers successfully incorporate elements from the varied genres Koontz had written in over the years—science fiction, mystery, suspense, and even romance—but it also defined his unique place in modern storytelling, setting a standard for the wave of best-selling novels to follow, including The Bad Place, Hideaway, and Velocity.

  Choosing a single Koontz title to recommend is certainly a difficult task, as he has produced an uncommon breadth of work. A reader can pick up any of his novels and enjoy rich, detailed descriptions, nuanced and fully realized characterizations, and complexity of plot. But few of his books so thoroughly and effectively explore the themes for which he is known, while grabbing the reader with such an engrossing tale of suspense. Koontz himself says that while he believes he has written a few books he likes as well as Watchers, he’s never written one he liked better.

  Watchers begins with Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force soldier and widower, who takes a day trip to the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, a place he remembers fondly from his youth. Consumed by loneliness and depression, Travis thinks the trip will help him recapture the hope and wonder of his childhood. Along the way, he encounters a golden retriever that seems to be warning him of impending danger, and though Travis cannot see this threat, he senses it and flees with the dog. Travis and the retriever, which he later names Einstein (for its obvious intelligence), form a bond. While in the park one day, they encounter Nora Devon, a woman emotionally damaged by an abusive aunt. Einstein acts as matchmaker, eventually bringing the two lonely people together.

  Travis and Nora spend the first half of the book building a relationship and working with Einstein to test the limits of his intelligence. Meanwhile, the reader is introduced to the antagonists of the piece. A Mafia hit man by the name of Vincent Nasco is dispatched to murder a group of scientists, all of whom were employed by a genetic research facility. Koontz also introduces readers to the Outsider, a genetically enhanced monstrosity that escaped the research facility (soon after Einstein made his own escape). The Outsider shares Einstein’s advanced intellect, but was designed as an instrument of violence with unbridled savagery and a deep-seated loathing for the dog.

  Discovering that they are targets, not only of Nasco and the Outsider, but also the U.S. government, Travis and Nora assume new identities and go into hiding. Though their ruse successfully throws their government pursuers off track, both Nasco and the Outsider find them, and a final confrontation ensues.

  Watchers, like many of Koontz’s novels, expresses the author’s belief in the power to overcome the tragedies and obstacles of the past, particularly when one opens up emotionally and allows new relationships to form. Though both Travis Cornell and Nora Devon begin in very dark emotional territory, neither believing they can attain happiness, it is through the process of trusting, befriending, and eventually loving that they find hope, allowing them to transcend their insecurities and fears.

  Additionally, Koontz celebrates the strength of the individual over acknowledged power institutions, a very common theme in his work. In Watchers, such diverse groups as family (Nora’s bitter, manipulative aunt), the Mafia, and the government are representative of these coercive institutions. Koontz puts his popular theme into concrete terms during an exchange Travis has with the intellectually enhanced golden retriever when he summarizes A Tale of Two Cities, saying in part, “. . . well, it’s all about the importance of valuing individuals over groups, about the need to place a far greater value on one man’s or woman’s life than on the advancement of the masses.”

  Any reader with knowledge of Koontz’s private life is well aware of his affinity for dogs. His belief in the fundamental loyalty, nobility, and integrity of canines is nowhere better shown than in his memorable and much-praised depiction of the golden retriever, Einstein, who maintains these admirable traits, despite having intellectually transcended his species. As such, Einstein serves as the perfect Koontz hero, suffering neither the moral ambiguity nor the internal dissonance of a human.

  The lines of good and evil are clearly drawn in Koontz’s novels. Heroic figures endure tragedy, and some are even martyred, but the author conveys an unerring message of right over wrong. Rarely do Koontz’s characters face strictly supernatural menace. Though otherworldly events may be implied (generally the result of a villain’s delusional state), often the true evils his heroes face are man made, whether they are inspired by technological, scientific, or physiological aberrations.

  Vince Nasco is the quintessential Koontz villain. He suffers delusions of grandeur, believing his murders serve a higher purpose: the life energy of his victims fueling his own immortality. Nasco is ruthless, selfish, and beyond redemption, as are many of Koontz’s villains. That noted, the author is far kinder in his depiction of the genetically designed monster. In fact, the Outsider serves to further point out Koontz’s belief that all true evil stems from human hands. As in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Koontz imbues his man-made creation with pathos, generating understanding and sympathy for the creature. In this way, Koontz suggests a victimization of the natural order by man; the Outsider is merely an instrument of human cruelty. It cannot help its violent tendencies, but even so, by the novel’s end, it acknowledges its own evil and manages redemption in a way its human counterpart, Nasco, never would.

  Koontz has such a vast body of work that it’s difficult to select any single novel to illustrate all he has to offer, but Watchers is an excellent point of entry. It’s a model of what a thriller can be, intense action matched by strong emotions and insistent themes. Koontz’s use of multiple genres is extraordinary and proves again that the spirit of a thriller isn’t limited to any one type of book.

  Lee Thomas is the Bram Stoker Award and Lambda Literary Award-winning author of the supernatural thrillers Stained, Damage, Parish Damned, and The Dust of Wonderland. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines, both print and electronic, and in the anthologies A Walk on the Darkside, Unspeakable Horror, and Inferno, among others. Writing as Thomas Pendleton, he is the author of Mason and coauthor (with Stefan Petrucha) of Wicked Dead, a series of edgy horror novels for young adult readers. His other titles for teens, under the pseudonym Dallas Reed, include the suspense thrillers Shimmer and The Calling.

  88

  Katherine Neville’s

  THE EIGHT (1988)

  Shirley Kennett

  Katherine Neville (1945–) was born in St. Louis, and developed a passion for writing as a young girl, completing her first novel when she was eight. After she graduated from college, the only job she could find was in the burgeoning new computer industry. Neville became an international consultant and executive, specializing in energy, a career that took her around the world. She never stopped writing, working at it on nights and weekends. But it wasn’t until she was forty that she sold her first two books and was able to quit her career and retire full time to her California tree house, free of distractions (including computers) to write full time. She poured her varied experiences into her first published book,The Eight, and created a multigenre story steeped in the terminology and symbolism of a chess game. The book is part historical realism, big-stakes thriller, suspense novel, puzzle mystery, cautionary political tale, conspiracy theory, and adventure quest with occult underpinnings—and all genius.The Eight, published in 1988, has been translated into forty languages and is a cult classic. Its innovative elements have influenced writers and delighted readers. Neville’s other novels are A Calculated Risk, The Magic Circle, and The Fire, the sequel to The Eight.

  Opening The Eight is a bit like taking Alice’s hand for a trip through Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. Very little is what it seems on the surface, puzzles abound, and the game can result in losing one’s head.

  The novel begins in France in the 1790s. The French Revolution is on the horizon, but for two young nuns in the Abbey of Montglane, cousins Mireille and Valentine, politics seems remote. The abbess, though, sees blood and chaos coming after seizures of church properties begin.

  For centuries, the abbey has hidden the pieces of the Montglane Service, a chess set said to contain mystical powers. The service was presented to Charlemagne a thousand years ago. The chessboard is a section of the abbey floor, hidden in plain sight. The pieces, heavily crusted with precious gems, are concealed in the walls.

  To keep the Service safe, the nuns abandon the abbey and scatter into the world, some of them carrying chess pieces. Plunging into a radically different life in Paris, Mireille and Valentine try to adjust to rapidly changing conditions.

  Alice: I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

  A parallel story unfolds in the 1970s. Catherine Velis, a computer specialist, is transferred to Algiers to work for OPEC. At her farewell party, a fortune-teller gives her a warning of danger, including “On the fourth day of the fourth month, then will come the Eight.” Before Catherine leaves, she reluctantly agrees to search for pieces of a jeweled chess set on behalf of a collector. At least, that’s the cover story—she’s been convinced by a close friend that she has a major role to play concerning the Montglane Service.

  The fortune-teller’s dire prediction begins a series of references to April 4th, Catherine’s birthday (and Katherine Neville’s). The month and day are 4 + 4 = 8. On its side, the numeral eight is the symbol for infinity ?. Standing upright, it is a representation of the double-helical structure of DNA. In the novel, it represents universal connectedness and timelessness. The chess pieces and the board embody ? because they contain a coded formula for immortality: the Elixir of Life, the ultimate goal of alchemy.

  Alternating between the two timelines, the women’s stories weave together like two ribbons forming the number eight, a cycle endlessly repeating. Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, is a tool that allows the reader to take part in the puzzle solving. High adventure, suspense, misdirection, violence, sex—it’s all here.

  The Gryphon: The adventures first . . . explanations take such a dreadful time.

  Mireille and Catherine both end up in Algiers, separated by roughly 180 years. Mireille takes up her role as Black Queen and decodes the formula for the Elixir of Life. Catherine treks through the desert, enters hidden caves, and has other adventures as she unravels the puzzles surrounding the Service. Finally she realizes that she is to be the next Black Queen.

  Alice: But it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

  Katherine Neville blended several writing techniques in a book that is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Dual timelines, misdirection, suspense, the incorporation of historical figures, powerful female leads, a quest format, and a grand theme played out over centuries are brilliantly combined.

  Nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger. While The Eight isn’t the first to use cliffhangers (think of the 1914 movie serial The Perils of Pauline or Thomas Hardy’s serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873), they’re particularly effective in this book. The end of a chapter not only leaves a character or situation at a suspenseful point, it also vaults the reader from one timeline to the other when the page is turned.

  Neville portrays a number of historical figures in the book, among them Robespierre, Bach, Catherine the Great, Marat, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Muammar Khadda?. These people interact with the book’s characters in plausible ways, creating an increased sense of believability. A particularly skillful interweaving occurs with Jean-Paul Marat, murdered in real life by Charlotte Corday in 1793. In Neville’s book, Marat is stabbed to death by Mireille, but Corday, who’d been planning the same crime, comes to Mireille in prison. The two women exchange clothing, and Mireille walks free. Corday goes to the guillotine not for having done the deed but as a willing sacrifice.

  Mireille and Catherine are strong heroines, solving the puzzles and dealing with violence and dangerous journeys. They are the Black Queens, and in chess, the queen is the most powerful piece. While the capture of the king ends the game, the king is weak and needs protection by the queen and the other pieces. No man comes to the rescue of Mireille or Catherine, who power through quests with the same flare and audacity Indiana Jones displays. Neville established that women could hold their own in adventure tales, as Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky had done a few years earlier in the crime-solving field.

  The Eight had a considerable effect on thrillers, likely paving the way for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code published fifteen years later. Neville’s influence and the popularity of Brown’s book led other authors to write quest-driven thrillers with historical backgrounds, notably William Diet-rich’s Napoleon’s Pyramids and Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy.

  Alice: When I get home I shall write a book about this place. . . . if I ever do get home.

  Shirley Kennett’s life parallels Katherine Neville’s to some extent. Kennett was born in St. Louis, wrote her first short story at the age of eight, and studied computer science. She rose from programmer to top-level manager in the field of hospital systems, and then became an independent computer consultant in clinical applications. In her forties, Kennett returned to her first passion, writing. She published a series of techno-thrillers (Time of Death and Gray Matter, among them) about a female computer expert, PJ Gray, who uses virtual reality to recreate homicides and then enters the simulations for harrowing experiences that provide insight into the killer’s mind. As Dakota Banks, Kennett also publishes quest thrillers with a paranormal twist (Dark Time).

  89

  Peter Straub’s

  KOKO (1988)

  Hank Wagner

  After writing two literary novels in the mid-1970s (Marriages and Under Venus), Peter Straub (1943–) composed Julia, his first novel of the supernatural, in 1976, and his second,If You Could See Me Now, in 1977. He came to prominence in the genre, however, with his fifth novel,Ghost Story, in 1979. Other horror novels followed, including Floating Dragon, as well as his collaborations with kindred spirit Stephen King: The Talisman and Black House. Departing from supernatural themes, Straub published Koko in 1988, which he followed with Mystery, The Throat, and The Hell-fire Club. His other thrillers include Mr. X. , lost boy lost girl, and In the Night Room. Straub edited the Library of America volume H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, the “New Wave Fabulists” issue of Conjunctions magazine, and the anthology Poe’s Children. He also published several volumes of poetry, the most notable being the collection,Leeson Park and Belsize Square: Poems 1970–1975. Straub’s talent has been recognized many times over, earning him numerous World Fantasy, British Fantasy, International Horror Guild, and HWA Bram Stoker awards, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, proving once again that thrillers span many genres.