What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz

The title to Dean Koontz latest work, What the Night Knows, is as dark as its fantastic plot. Years ago, teenager John Calvino returns home to the scene of an ongoing murderous frenzy. Serial killer Alton Turner Blackwood, unsatisfied with the ritualistic killing of three families in this small city, has slaughtered this boy's entire family. John, in a desperate act of self defense, shoots and kills the killer. Twenty years later, John is now a homicide detective. Someone or something is recreating the Blackwood murders and it appears that the Calvino family is scheduled to die.

A master of the telling of dark tales, Dean Koontz takes readers into dark, creepy places in this tale, some were places I didn't really want to go. I went against my will, mesmerized by Koontz' novel about pure evil. As a story, What the Night Knows is scary because it could be taken from a newspaper anywhere in the country. Alas, serial killers are not the stuff of imagination, but a fairly common reality. Yet, Koontz takes us one step further into the dark, dark midnight with a seemingly resurrected killer that literally appears to have taken a furlough from hell.

The children of the Calvino family are excellent examples of Koontz' abiity to make his characters alive with emotions and quirks that seem familiar and yet hauntingly strange. Naomi is the typical somewhat self absorbed princess, Zach is the Marine wannabe and Minnie the wise beyond her years sibling. All are completely normal children, until a shadowy figure starts lurking in a certain mirror. That is, they are almost all completely normal, with a slight exception I can't mention without a major plot spoiler.
The mother of the family, Nicolette is an artist. Unlike many artists, Nicky is a financial success, allowing John and their family to enjoy a lifestyle no honest cop could possibly afford. She plays her part in the story very well.

John Calvino still bears the psychological scars from his encounter with the fiend that night of years past, and now must live it again in an attempt to save the lives of four families, including his own.

If you read What the Night Knows, be prepared to be disturbed. I know I was.