Author:  Dean Koontz

Title:  Breathless

Publisher:  Bantam

Dean Koontz has been around for a long time. He has over 50 books to his credit, including numerous bestsellers and several film adaptations of his work—like Phantoms, the 1998 film staring Ben Affleck. Despite writing his first novel over 40 years ago, Koontz shows no signs of slowing down in Breathless, his latest suspense fiction thriller. Known as a keen wordsmith with a knack for deep and engaging plots, Koontz furthers his illustrious reputation with his intricate, artful new novel.

A lesser storyteller could not handle a plot featuring:  a card-counting mathematician, a dedicated veterinarian, a reclusive furniture maker, a pair of long-estranged identical twins and the Department of Homeland Security. Koontz manages all these elements and more in Breathless, with direction and a sense of mystery that hooks the reader from page one.

The plot in Breathless is so tight and intertwined that even a simple summary will give it away. Let's just say that all of the characters above are involved in a suspenseful stew of Washington elite, a cold-blooded killer, and a threat to civilized American society as we know it. When strange, unexplainable phenomena and a pair of mysterious visitors arrive in a Colorado mountain community, the heat turns up and the delectable dish boils over.

Koontz' style is detailed and poetic. In passages, he can get carried away with his love of metaphor and turn-of-phrase. But for the most part, his writing is intricate and refined, and his prose even rises to the level of art at times. Other authors in the suspense fiction genre are frequently guilty of paring down their vocabulary and story structure in order to appeal to impatient readers. Not Koontz. He dares to delight in polished descriptions of settings and characters, and to weave deeper meanings into actions and dialogue. The refreshing result is an easy-to-read novel that almost feels like literature.

Equally refreshing is what Koontz chooses to exclude from his book:  profanity and gore. Do not worry. There are plenty of creeps and chills in Breathless, but it's the dramatic build-up that delivers the punch, not the blood. This stylistic decision makes the moments of violence all the more stark and disturbing. Some authors shock with details. Koontz shocks by contextualizing the violence and climbing inside the mind that commits it.

Christian readers will find much to applaud in Breathless. Rumor has it that Koontz is a Catholic, and while the novel is by no means overtly faith-based, Breathless features moral issues as significant themes. Among the most notable moral theme is a decided contrast Koontz draws between the primary villain and a primary hero and their ideas about the nature of truth. The former believers "that each of us must be a circle, inventing his own truth moment by moment ... living for this moment and the next, only this moment and the next." One of the story's heroes, on the other hand, maintains a strong sense of honesty even though "a love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished" in his life.

Yes, the novel is deep, but readers will not drown in the details. Sharp, subtle, and full of symbolism, Dean Koontz's latest work represents a winning combination of fast-paced tension, artistic achievement, and good taste that will leave fans of suspense fiction and fans of well-crafted storytelling Breathless.

**This review first published on December 18, 2009.