If your brain fried from the overthought metaphors in Dean Koontz’s previous series (see The Whispering Room) then I have both good and bad news for you about The Crooked Staircase.
But before we dive in, let’s have a good example:
You look out the window, and a gentle breeze stirs your pathetic peach tree outside. In the book, it would go something like this:
“For a moment, it seemed as though the wildest typhoon, the Divine Wind itself, swept through in front of your window’s time-frozen glass, and with an irresistible force of a prehistoric giant, tore and tugged at the stubborn, robust roots of the furrowed, oxygen-breathing creature, that clinging tenaciously to existence, perhaps reaching down to the burning center of the Earth.”
Sounds good, right? Yep. (Actually, not really.) Twice a page? Not so much anymore.
The bad news is that the author’s beloved heartstring-pulling metaphors still plague The Crooked Staircase. The good news is that their quantity has become more tolerable, thus presumably reducing the harmful effects on your mind. Hooray!
There’s more good news: The Crooked Staircase, as a thriller, is just as gripping as its predecessors, and the author piles on even more excitement for this installment. Teetering on the edge of believability though, the continuous action, cat-and-mouse chase, and thrill of the hunt are all captivating. Moreover, beyond the usual recipe (where Jane, in their own home, stalks and dispatches one scumbag after another, then starts the whole process over with someone new), two new threads emerge to avoid the allure of repetition.
One of these new paths in The Crooked Staircase follows Jane’s friends, Gavin and Jessie, which not only brings refreshing diversity but also creates tension beyond Jane’s basic storyline: after all, you know Jane is indestructible, but worrying about her friends becomes serious business, especially since they have the little boy. (And it would be such a shame for that adorable young lad.)
Two new characters also enter the scene whose fates are cause for concern: Sanjay and Tanuja. It’s not entirely clear why they’re here, as they never intersect with Jane or her friends, making their inclusion somewhat baffling. Although the quantity of pages doesn’t particularly require it, it’s hard not to think that they’re just present to fill space – even if these two characters are well-crafted, along with their clever improvisations and desperate escapes, which only add to the tension. Unfortunately the outcome of their plight becomes increasingly ominous along the way.
Mr. Koontz wisely discovered while writing the third installment of the Jane Hawk series that if all the villains are evil, cookie-cutter sociopaths or remotely controlled broccoli brains, whose resistance Jane can overcome within moments, it becomes boring after a while. So, he singled out two miserable blockhead from the wild bunch and began to flesh them out with their own chapters.
This creates a puzzling situation: “Bob and Bobek” are two unscrupulous bastards, but as you get to know them better, you somewhat develop a liking for these two dirty rascals. Or you just get used to them, I don’t know, as they amusingly annoy each other. (And less amusingly, murder innocent people.) May they step on a Lego in the dark!
The consistently high quality of The Crooked Staircase easily surpasses the previous two installments of the series. However, it also becomes apparent that after Koontz uncle hastily got rid of the main financial and IT geniuses of the conspiracy, he struggles to create another believable main antagonist for us.
8,3/10
The Crooked Staircase (Jane Hawk #3) by Dean Koontz
491 pages, Hardcover
Published in 2018 by Bantam