Publisher: Sperling Paperback
ISBN Code: 88-8274-554-6
Pages: 502
Price: 9.20 euros
In Moonlight Cove, a small town on the Northern California coast inhabited by less than three thousand people and usually very quiet, some heinous and inexplicable murders occur. Sam Booker, an FBI agent with family problems behind him, is sent to the small town incognito to investigate. Tessa Lockland, sister of one of the victims, also arrives in Moonlight Cove to find out the true circumstances of the terrible loss. Thanks in part to Chrissie, a very bright local child, and Harry, an invalid and curious Vietnam veteran, the protagonists will uncover the evil biogenetics project of a famous computer genius, Thomas Shaddack, and the monstrous consequences of his experiments.
Swaying between the classical werewolf theme and that of new technologies applied to genetics, suspended between Dr. Moreau and American action movies, Dean Koontzoffers an all in all mediocre attempt at genre literature.
The setting (a small town on the American coast, the foggy and gloomy nights on the cliffs...) and the protagonists/side characters (the hero full of problems, the deformed creatures halfway between man and animal, the conspiracy involving a good part of the townspeople...) are the same as those that can be found in other works by the same author (e.g., The Man Who Loved Darkness). The entanglements between the characters also denote a kind of "lack of imagination," as the story ends with an utterly predictable ending that very much picks up from movies and TV shows made in the USA.
Stylistically, the novel, while really meaty, is smooth and well-crafted, though not of surprising quality: as happens in certain cases, the weight of translation from the original language is considerable, and it is not possible to define precisely where the linearity of the story comes from, whether from the author or the translator.
Midnight thus lends itself to an easy read (to be honest, almost not at all challenging) and leaves in the mouth the unassertive taste of a story that would have liked to have been tasty, but which in the end one hopes to end quickly in order to move on to something more palatable.
Review by Robedio
