Coni's Reviews > The Door to December

I didn't know until I read the afterword that this was originally written under another name. I don't know Dean Koontz's writing style well enough to tell if this was written differently. It was set up as a detective story solving a paranormal crime, so while the detective angle seemed a bit new, the paranormal and possible conspiracies seemed to be in line with what I had read by Koontz previously.

Dan Haldane is called to a crime scene where three bodies are so brutally beaten that no one can determine what kind of weapon was used against them. There is also a missing nine-year-old girl, Melanie, that has been used a human experiment for the three dead men, including one that used to be her father. The detective brings in the ex-wife, Dr. Laura McCaffrey, to help who has been looking for her missing daughter ever since her husband took off with her six years earlier. Between the two of them, along with a private investigator they figure out what's been happening to Melanie and why people keep dying that are somehow related to this secret experiment.

There were some very odd things that really took me out of the story while reading it:

- The book has a very dated view on autism. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it was written in 1985. I will not claim to be an expert on autism, but when describing a girl who has spent a good portion of her life in a sensory deprivation tank as autistic seemed odd. She seemed a bit stuck in her mind, but I would relate that to being traumatized for a long period of time. The first time autism is mentioned, it immediately made me look to see when the book was written since it was so out of place.

- Haldane is obsessed with Laura's beauty right away. There are multiple paragraphs about how he has the hots for her, but knows he can't act on it. It was incredibly icky to read. Later on in the story, I came to like his character, but that was how he was introduced. Why? He could have been working this case with her and come to admire her over the course of the story without pondering if he should start a relationship with her. So weird.

- Koontz throws in really odd words that don't seem to fit with the level of writing that the rest of book. Throughout the book, he references some entity that has been destroying people. Then in one instance, he references it as a psychogeist. What is that?? He explains it later on in the book, but it seems he forgot that he didn't explain it before he used it the first time. It was much like he did some research and wanted to use the correct term, but you can't just slip in uncommon words without explanation.

Even with those odd parts, I did enjoy the rest of the book. The revelation of what was going on was really easy to guess so I thought it must have been wrong. Nope! It was pretty obvious but I still enjoyed the rest of the story.

I'd rate this 3.5 stars.