What's on the iPod? - The Husband

If iPods are now providing the soundtracks for our lives, my score is not limited to music. Lately we've been painting our house on our own, as we have time. Christine watches a lot of HGTV.

I follow orders.

In the pink room
Listening to books on tape is not new to me. In our previous house the owners had attempted to paint a long living room dining room combination an interesting shade of rose. It didn't turn out rose.

It turned out pink.

I listened to Spock's World through two coats of Kilz. That was in boom box (aka the iPod mega) days. It took another Eric Van Lustbader novel to finish the job, two coats of a deep Martha Stewart tan. I suspect when the light is right, the new owners can still see a few flecks of pink showing through.

The new Dean Koontz
Eventually I'll be able to mark the rooms of my current house by audio books. It's not bad having pop-literature sort of permeating rooms.

The master bedroom was Stephen King's Cell. A hallway was Bad Twin. Two walls of the living room were Dirty Blonde by Linda Socottoline.

The Husband Dean Koontz helped finish the living room. I guess that's appropriate in more ways than one since I was working for Christine.

The Husband is my favorite Dean Koontz novel since Life Expectancy. It made the work go nicely.

Back to the book
Velocity and Forever Odd are good Dean Koontz books. They just didn't quite grab me in the way Life Expectancy did.

The Husband is a race against time story with a killer twist -- a guy who doesn't have $2 million is ordered to get it or his wife will be killed.

On its own, that's a Lifetime thriller, but it's not about just getting the money together.

It's about who the hero, Mitch Rafferty, is.

And how he grew up and why that puts him in harms way.

In other words, it has the Dean Koontz master style.

Certain action scenes reminded me a little of action scenes in False Memory, but the characters are all new. Don't want to do spoilers here, but know that as with many Koontz characters, Mitch's past is haunting him.

And it puts his happy present day existence at dire risk. His wife, whom he loves unwaveringly, is in peril and thus his entire existence is on the line.

It's no wonder this one is already set to be a movie, but I predict even though it's sort of ready made for an hour-and-45 minute thriller, much of the love story and the back story won't translate to the big screen in quite the way Koontz can tell it in prose.

With rich scene settings and descriptions blending with rich emotional detail, The Husband is the perfect score for painting a room or a summer drive, or I'm sure in its hard copy form it's wonderful for the beach.

Ipod Lifestyle