FEAR NOTHING by Dean Koontz - SIGNED FIRST EDITION UK BOOK
See all titles by Dean Koontz.
Christopher Snow is the best-known resident of 12,000-strong
Moonlight Bay, California. This is because 28-year-old Chris has
xeroderma pigmentosum (XP)—a light-sensitivity so severe that he cannot
leave his house in daylight, cannot enter a normally-lit room, cannot
sit at a computer. Chris's natural element is the night, and his
parents, both academics, chose to live in Moonlight Bay because in a
small town Chris can make the nightscape his own—roaming freely through
the town on his bike, surfing in the moonlight, exploring while most
people sleep.
But Chris's brilliant mother, a scientist, was
killed in a car accident 2 years ago, and as the book opens his father,
Steven Snow, is dying of cancer; Chris's protected life is about to
change forever. We meet Chris as he is carefully preparing himself to go
out in the late-afternoon sun to visit the hospital. In his last
moments of life his father tells Chris he is "sorry" and that Chris
should "fear nothing"—cryptic words that Chris cannot really relate to.
Steven
Snow's body is removed to the hospital basement for transport to the
funeral home/crematorium, and when Chris goes downstairs for a final
moment of farewell, he witnesses a frightening and clandestine
encounter: the funeral director and another man Chris doesn't recognize
are substituting the body of a hitchhiker for Steven Snow's body–which
is being taken not to the crematorium but to some secret destination.
For
Chris, this scene is the first intimation of a conspiracy that he will
come to realize envelopes many of his townspeople. His parents knew of
it and wanted to protect Chris from it. His best friend has had hints of
something wrong because of the frightening nocturnal visitors that have
come to his beachhouse. And the first person to try to explain to Chris
what's going on—and warn him about the special danger he himself is
in—will be hideously murdered.
In the 24 hours this book
encompasses, Christopher Snow will find out that, sheltered though he's
been, he has the soul of a fighter and an adventurer. By the end of the
book he will have killed a man, will have discovered the role his own
mother played in the birth of the conspiracy, will have come to
recognize the extraordinary guardians that, unknown to him, have watched
over him for years. He will realize that some people hate him, others
revere him, and neither his own life nor those of anyone he knows will
ever be the same.
This is a killer of a book, period. Probably the best of Koontz's career to date...
If you've never tried Koontz before, this is the place to start,
while for longtime readers, I need say no more than that this is Koontz
writing at the peak of his form. - Charles de Lint