3

Great story. Really hard to put down. Lots of frustration with a main character that makes the ending worth while.

3 STARS

"Timothy Carrier, 30, a mason, has a dry sense of humour. Tim's friend, Rooney, owns a workingman's bar, Lamplighter Tavern, where the eccentric customers inspire Tim's deadpan wit. On a Monday evening, the bar is nearly deserted. A nervous man, about Tim's own age, sits down one stool from Tim, orders a beer. He glances at Tim, then asks, 'Are you him?' His sense of fun engaged, Tim says, 'Who else would I be?' Tim's game is to sustain an oblique conversation until the stranger realizes his mistake. But the man slides a fat manila envelope along the bar. 'Half of it's there. The rest when she's gone.' He walks out, leaving Tim stunned. In the envelope are thick packets of hundred-dollar bills. There's also a photo of a pretty woman, her name and address. Another stranger, an intense-looking man, again about Tim's age, enters the bar, looks around, comes towards Tim, and sits where the first stranger sat. He orders a beer. He says nothing. Tim says nothing. The guy glances at the manila envelope. He's the man who was supposed to get the envelope. He thinks Tim wants to hire him to kill the woman! Shaken, thinking fast, Tim says he's had a change of heart. He removes the picture of the woman from the envelope, puts it aside, closes the envelope, passes it to the stranger. 'Half what we agreed -- for doing nothing. Call it a no-kill fee.' The stranger gives him a sour look, shrugs, takes the envelope, leaves. Tim hurries across the tavern, cracks the front door, looks out, and sees the intense man in the passenger seat of a sedan parked at the curb. He's cranking down the window in order to place a detachable emergency beacon on the top of the car. As it begins to flash, the car rockets away from the curb. The for-hire killer is a cop. In fact, the killer is someone more powerful than a cop. Tim's wayward sense of humour has led him into a very dangerous world." (From Amazon)

A fair suspense novel

Tim Carrier is in the wrong place at the wrong time when, at his local watering hole, he stumbles into the middle of a kill-for-hire against an innocent woman Tim has never met. Tim is compelled to try to assist the woman, Linda, against a killer that seems almost supernaturally skilled and forces almost too powerful to overcome. This book is sort of a horror fairy tale. I say that because the characters bear little resemblance to reality and the plot turns on shadowy conspiracy-theory power players controlling the world behind the scenes and yet, everything turns out okay in the end. If you are willing to completely suspend disbelief, you will probably enjoy it.

The Good Guy is thrilling, and you can feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins. The anticipation, the fear, it is all a heady mix that bubbles up to a conclusion. It’s a novel that I’m surprised hasn’t been adapted for the screen – suited to the Jason Stratham type actors. It was a fun read that passed the hours quickly; was it Koontz’s best novel, not by far but it was fun for what it was. A lot of stuff didn’t add up for me and I’ll get into that soon.

The Good Guy centres around the event of a stranger walking into a bar and mistakes our protagonist, Tim Carrier as a for hire killer. He’s given a package with a bucketload of money and the picture of his target, a woman called Linda Pacquette with instructions on how to kill her. Before he can say anything the actual killer walks in and Time hastily tells him he’s changed his mind and offers the money as a “sorry I’ve wasted your time” severance. (Yeah, right.) The killer leaves, Tim follows him out, he gets into a cop car and off he pops. Intriguing premise, right? Well from here in out it gets zany, quickly.

The Good Guy had a storyline that should have blown me away but ended up just being a kind of meh-ish read. From this point forward the intriguing storyline just paled due to substandard narrative and things that just didn’t ring true. Linda Paquette is the targeted woman who says things like she loves action movies but doesn’t own a TV?? After mere hours together they are talking about living with each other?? Although I did really enjoy the wit that they shared together. They seemed to hit it off quickly and they propped each up during a very traumatic situation.

The Good Guy has a villainous villain. The guy has a serious god complex and seems extremely unhinged. Was he always like that? He can’t recall any memories before his eighteenth birthday so assumes that he came from another realm…the mirror realm. I would have thought, considering he was working for some elite, hugely secret government organisation that they would have at least performed a psych evaluation. He kills people left, right and centre and that’s not even the contracted kill, he calls them collateral damage. It all draws to a final confrontation in one of the most underwhelming endings ever.

The back story of Tim Carrier interested me the most and it did have a great payoff. He’s tortured by events in his past and it all makes sense how he could do the things he did as no normal civilian would have the courage to do. Overall, it was an okay read but it definitely wasn’t the best Koontz novel I have read.