Darkfall, by Dean Koontz, is an edge-of-your-seat masterpiece. It begins with a 2-part prologue.

In the first part, Penny Dawson hears something moving and scurrying around in her dark bedroom. She believes it to be a mouse and isn’t frightened. Then it scurries underneath her bed and she tries to shoo it out with a plastic baseball bat, which it pulls out of her hands. When she retrieves the baseball bat, it has holes in the end that look as though they have been made by teeth or claws. Now she is frightened.

Part 2 of the prologue opens with the sounds of a burly bodyguard, Morrant, struggling and crying out for help. His friend Vince, who is coming down the stairs, is shocked. Nothing frightens Morrant. Instead of running out the door, Vince stands there until he doesn’t hear Morrant screaming anymore. Then it is too late for him. These little creatures, with glowing eyes from hell, chase after him. He locks himself in the bathroom, but these creatures after his blood. And locked doors won’t stop them.

The opening of the book is action packed and makes it extremely difficult to lay the book down. The action doesn’t stop until these hellish creatures (my husband calls them voodoo weasels) have been sent back to where they came from.

Jack doesn’t believe in voodoo, neither does his partner, Rebecca. Even thouggh hints are coming from all around them that voodoo is somehow involved with these murders, they try to find some other logical explanation for the murders that have happened.

Jack is the first one to accept that voodoo is playing a part in them. He must find a way to stop what is happeneing - his children are on the list of those to be killed.

After managing to escape the clutches of these devilish creatures in a myriad of different places, the children are taken to their aunt and uncle’s apartment to stay with them. Surely the voodoo weasels couldn’t find them there. But they do. Jack and Rebecca take them, along with the aunt and uncle, out of the apartment just in time. They emerge from the building into a blizzard, one of the worst snowstorms that Manhattan has seen in a while. Very few people are on the streets, very few vehicles. Rebecca and Jack each obtain a police vehicle and go their separate ways - Jack to find and stop Lavelle, a powerful Jamaican voodoo priest who is behind the hellish creatures and out for revenge. Rebecca needs to get the children to safety.

The nail biting last part of the book has Jack racing against time to stop Lavelle, while Rebecca and the children, out in a blizzard, are trying to escape these hellish creatures chasing them. Rebecca and the children seek sanctuary in a church, but that only holds the creatures away for a little while. They find openings (that would qualify as an open door) and climb through.

I highly recommend this book, one of Dean Koontz’s best. You may want to make sure you have a bit of free time with no pressing appointments before you start reading.

If you would like to buy a copy of this book, a copy of it can be obtained from Amazon (a link is below).

Darkfall