HIDEAWAY / Dean Koontz / Book Review / Brian Lee Durfee (spoiler free)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one television program in the history of the entire universe. I am Brian Lee Durfee, author of The Forgetting Moon, The Blackest Heart, and The Lonesome Crown. All three books published by Simon and Schuster's Saga Press. Today, I'm going to be reviewing Hideaway by Dean Koontz, a suspense horror thriller novel.

[00:00:27]Came out in 1992, one of his earlier success stories novels. Um, let's talk about the cover first cuz you know I love graphic design and cover illustration. Now, this was all right. I mean, it ain't no it's nothing special.

[00:00:41]It's certainly orange and red and full of very bright warm colors. On the back, we've got a picture of Dean Koontz and his dog.

[00:00:51]I've got every single Dean Koontz novel in my library over there. I've shown it before.

[00:00:56]Um, it's over there, trust me. Well, I'll show you.

[00:01:01]Pan through the library. I've got an entire shelf of Dean Koontz books right there.

[00:01:06]And another entire shelf of Dean Koontz books right there. Anyway, we've been reading and reviewing. I will eventually leave a review on the channel for every single Dean Koontz book I have. I think we're about a third of the way through his library now. I mean, probably done about 15 or 16 reviews of his books, maybe more than that. I don't know.

[00:01:25]Anyway, this is a powerful supernatural thriller uh typical of Dean Koontz. It's a novel of ideas um kind of a modern parable of life and death, good and evil, love and hate, light and darkness.

[00:01:40]Um, it's got a breathless pace, uh suspenseful, deeply drawn characters. Uh it's and it's a taut serial killer novel and kind of an occult fantasy at the same time about good, evil, God, the devil, faith.

[00:01:59]And um kind of it raises some questions about the ethical issues of modern technology.

[00:02:06]And again, this is came out in 1992, 1993-ish and we were even then, you know, with AI now and this is 2026 and AI and modern technology, what are the ethics behind it? There was like stuff going on be even back in the early '90s that people were questioning is this even like something we should be doing?

[00:02:27]Of course, it's all led to where we are now. Um, there's a couple of the the two main characters are Lindsey and Hatch Harrison. Um, they have a four-year-old child that has been dead now for four years. So, they're grieving the loss of that child. Their marriage is just barely hanging on. And at the opening scene in this book, they get into a harrowing car accident. And [snorts] the aftermath of the car accident is basically a question like how long can a person be dead in cold water and still be revived? I mean, there's been in Dean Koontz talks about this in the book. There's been cases real cases where, you know, little kids have fallen into icy waters and drowned and been dead for like an hour or so and like been actually revived and been okay. And so, that's kind of what this car crash entails. And um this uh the the the man of the couple, of Lindsey Hatch Harrison, Hatch, he actually dies um in cold water and he's resurrected uh hours later.

[00:03:42]And which poses the question, is there life after death?

[00:03:47]And can souls be linked physically through near-death experiences?

[00:03:52]As Hatch gets resurrected, he starts to see visions of brutal murders. He and he feels and senses the emotions of the killer himself. The killer is a guy named Vasago.

[00:04:05]Um, his name effectively um means demon in mythology of Vasago. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Anyway, this guy's a sociopathic uh and he and this guy also, this Vasago also died, had a near-death was dead for a while from a police shooting. And um so, are these two people linked because they were both dead for a while at the same time and now they can kind of like they've got this bond, this supernatural bond. And it just kind of spirals into kind of a chaotic serial killer cat and mouse chasing like uh a de very good Dean Koontz Dean Koontz.

[00:04:57]I'll edit that out. Sorry, Mr. Koontz.

[00:05:00]Um, it's just a very very fast-paced Dean Koontz thriller like he always does. And that leads to a big final confrontation that I think is extremely violent actually. This whole book is kind of a little more violent than most Dean Koontz that I've read. Um, my overall impression of it, I love Dean Koontz. He's written some of my favorite thriller novels, some of my favorite horror books. And um this fits about kind of average in the middle of all of them.

[00:05:32]Like the 50 [snorts] or so that I've got, it's probably would be ranked in the 25 to 30 area.

[00:05:40]Not one of the ones that just blew me away, but not one of the ones that semi-disappointed me. And there are some of those. So, average for Dean Koontz, I think um and I'm glad I got to reread it. I mean, I read it back in '92 when it came out and I just reread it now some 30,000 years later. Anyway, it's a good book.

[00:06:03]Good book as most Dean Koontz books are.