Night Chills

Night Chills by Dean Koontz, was one of the books given to me by a co-worker who knew I "liked to read". As I've mentioned before on this blog, Dean Koontz is mostly a hit-or-miss author for me but I tend to like his earlier works better, probably because they are usually more of a straight forward horror story than his later work.

This novel is a bit dated, having been written in the 1970s and concerns the phenomenon of subliminal advertising, taken to the extreme where it can actually be used for mind control. Three people of varying backgrounds and motivations get together to coordinate an experiment on an isolated "company town" where the small, controlled population is subjected to the experimental technique. If the experiment works, the three stand to become all powerful (and all rich). The title of the book comes from the side effect that the experimentees get: night chills similar to flu-like symptoms.

The book was a quick read, and a page-turner. The bad guys, particularly the main inventor of the mind control technique, were far more developed than the good guys who fight back, making it a bit difficult to root for them. And, I must say, there is some pretty extreme graphic sexual scenes in this novel, mostly having to do with the main inventor abusing his new found power to get back at women for all of the grief he suffered in his youth.

In summary, not a bad Koontz novel, but not ranking at the top either.