I thoroughly enjoyed Dead Koontz’s Life Expectancy. It’s the only Koontz novel I’ve ever read, and it was so wonderfully engaging that I hated for it to be over.
On the night of Jimmy Tock’s birth, his dying grandfather predicts that he will experience five terrible days between his twentieth and thirtieth years. The grandfather gives the dates and then dies, leaving Jimmy to grow up in anticipation of these five terrible days.
Jimmy follows in his father’s footsteps, becoming a baker in a seemingly idyllic Colorado resort town. Raised in a loving family, Jimmy’s life seems almost too ideal, but then all that is about to change, when the first of the five begins.
He faces his five days with cautious hope, but as each one passes and the truth of his grandfather’s prophecy becomes clear, he grows increasingly determined, but never loses his humor and basic faith in himself and his family. These are, naturally, the very things he needs to survive as well as the things that are threatened.
For my money, the most exciting was the second, which had Jimmy and his pregnant wife fighting to survive a harsh winter night in the Colorado Rockies after having been run off the road by revenge seeking psycho, but it was the fourth that really made the book, as it was so surprising and contrary to everything I had come to expect after the previous three days.
Koontz’s book is a fun and often surprising tale of the power of love to hold evil at bay, and it’s a reminder that even our most terrible days often pave the way to bring us our greatest blessings. I found it difficult to put down, and by the end I was wishing that Jimmy had had ten terrible days. But that’s just mean.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
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