Review

The Husband
Dean Koontz
Bantam; 416pp
It’s another boring day in paradise for gardener Mitch Rafferty, planting impatiens on a rich client’s lawn.

Then his cell rings. It’s Holly, his wife, and she doesn’t sound good. Someone slaps her, she screams, and a man comes on to tell Mitch that he has 60 hours to raise $2 million to ransom her. Just so Mitch knows they mean business, the man says, see the guy walking a dog across the street? Mitch looks and blam! A bullet to the head kills the dog walker. Let this be a warning, too, that the kidnapper-killers will know if Mitch says word one to the cops about his predicament, and Holly will suffer.
Where is a gardener supposed to get $2 million? The sinister caller says he’ll let Mitch know; just be a good machine and follow instructions. Despite his terror, Mitch does until...but uh-uh-uh, nothing should be given away about this sinuous nail-biter’s developments.
Suffice it to say that Mitch’s intensely warped family, managed according to his rigidly materialistic psychologist-father’s theories; two betrayals, one of Mitch, the other of the kidnappers; a slick child pornography entrepreneur; a humane but persistent police detective; and a New Ager psychopath all help ratchet up the suspense and the violence.
Yet Koontz is no less an artist for his championing of the good and his determination to have readers identify with it, as this hair-raising thriller attests.

The NYT list

PAPERBACK FICTION
1.  The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
2. Blue Smoke, Nora Roberts
3. 4th of July, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
4. The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger
5. The Jury, Fern Michaels
PAPERBACK NONFICTION
1.  An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore
2. Night, Elie Wiese
3. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
4. Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley
5. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell