Book Reviews

Dean Kuntz's Nameless Series (All 6 books)

Dean Koontz is the author of at least fourteen bestsellers. His books have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide, a figure that increases by more than seventeen million copies per year, and his work is published in thirty-eight languages. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lives with his wife, Gerda, and their dog, Elsa, in Southern California.
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The same reviews here are also on Goodreads site as:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3437797626
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3409226950
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3409349501
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3412408050
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3427596823
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3429274258

Since at the time of my reviews, Amazon wasn't accepting e-books' reviews from WdC, links to these six e-books in Amazon are:

https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Fire-Nameless-Book-ebook/dp/B07Y8HKVGJ/
https://www.amazon.com/Photographing-Dead-Nameless-Book-2-ebook/dp/B07Y8HLS8T/
https://www.amazon.com/Praying-Mantis-Bride-Nameless-Book-ebook/dp/B07Y8CXZ2Y/
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Rain-Nameless-Book-4-ebook/dp/B07Y8JC3RD/
https://www.amazon.com/Mercy-Snakes-Nameless-Book-ebook/dp/B07Y8JDBS5/
https://www.amazon.com/Memories-Tomorrow-Nameless-Book-6-ebook/dp/B07Y8HQ783/


Book 1
In the Heart of the Fire (Nameless 1) by Dean Koontz


It seems Dean Koontz has also been influenced by the recent minimalism fad. Otherwise this story would be more fleshed out. Still, it is strong and entertaining, and can be read within minutes to an hour.

The main character is nameless, a clairvoyant who can see into the past and future but whose amnesia has erased most of his memory. Nameless, in this story works using the name Ben Shepard, which isn’t his real name, but the name given to by the hidden group of people, Ace of Diamonds, that Nameless works for. The group uses computer hacking skills to hand out justice.

The story takes place in a Texas town where nameless is sent by the group. The town has a pedophile sheriff called Russell Soakes who has at the moment has his eyes set on a little girl belonging to a single mother, Jenny. Soakes has a deputy named Harry Carlisle and other people in town some of whom believe in him and guilty others who share in the same offense. Soakes seems to be an unshakable villain, but no villain is unshakable and Koontz sees to that. As his usual, Koontz sets Soakes up by letting him search a motel room and finding an envelope showing the photos of his crimes. The ending of the story was greatly satisfying.

I couldn’t help feel for the young woman Jenny and her two children, especially Jenny’s brave positioning to save her child.

The story is told in third person and the plot is good. I have always like Koontz’s storytelling and nothing is missing here from that. What was missing to me was the longer version of a story with Koontz’s stretching the exciting thriller moments to fill them with horror or suspense. Those moments here are handled with a sentence or two, which doesn’t take away from the plot but from the gratification of a reader.

Despite the shortness of this book, I enjoyed it and plan to read the rest of the stories in this series.

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Photographing the Dead (Nameless #2) by Dean Koontz
B07Y8HLS8T


The story opens with two girls Mia and Kara who are in fact twins, hiking through the Mojave, which made me believe it would be all about them, but it was not. It was about a serial killer named Palmer Oxenwald, an amateur photographer, who killed and tortured his victims for the joy of it, and the two girls who again showed up at the end of the story were his last targets.

The author tells the growing up years and the background of the killer, which makes his killer instinct inborn. At first, Nameless, now working under the name Kenton Paul Mallory, approaches the killer in a friendly manner, then starts to stalk him with the car Ace of Diamonds has supplied him with.

Just like nameless, the reader still is not on to who Ace of Diamonds is, whether it is a person or a group. Whatever it is, it is very capable and can use the top technical gadgets in the most imaginative way possible, and Ace is not out for justice as prescribed by the law, but it has its own measure of what justice is. I think this idea alone elevates this series from the mundane, plus Nameless’s amnesia that keeps the reader wondering what Ace did to him to make him into what he is.

At the end of the story, justice, kind of like Karma, does happen but it is poetic justice, violent in itself, but no more violent than what Palmer inflicted on his victims.

I think this second story was on the same scale as the first one, but since Ace and Nameless have aroused my curiosity, I will continue with the series.

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The Praying Mantis Bride.(Nameless #3) by Dean Koontz
B07Y8CXZ2Y


This is the third story in Koontz’s Nameless series, and I am glad I read it. I think so far, it is the best one.

I liked this one the best because it showed Koontz’s touch of telling a thriller with suspense and stretching a freaky moment or two.

The base idea is the same as in the earlier books. Ace of Diamonds sends Nameless on a mission and Nameless comes out on top. Except in this one Nameless takes on a few different names at different times, Shepherd Shaw, Harry Walker, Nathan Brock, and Archibald Goodwin. Also, there are several other people also sent by Ace to help Nameless. Together with the black widow, her mother, and her victims, all those names were a bit difficult to keep in mind, but the story was engaging enough that I didn’t dwell much on knowing each and every name. Except, the black widow Lucia’s mother’s name Valjean Jane made me smile as I wondered about its connection to Jan Valjean of the Les Miserables fame.

There is also something personal for Ace to get this black widow Lucia Jones Stossel, Roskin, Rickenbah. Her last husband that she killed was a friend of Ace, meaning he might have done some work for Ace.

What Ace does so perfectly is a mystery that keeps running in the veins of all these stories. According to Nameless, "They are not, not, not in the business of assuring justice where it has been denied. Justice has been twisted by culture and politics until its meaning is everywhere contested. Each of their missions is instead meant to bring truth and its consequences into the life of someone who has woven a persona of lies, thereby putting an end to his or her crimes."

Lucia’s mother is a man-hater and she has raised her with the same beliefs and superstitions, and superstitions play a big role in getting Lucia at the end. The ending is again a surprise, not the ending that came to Nameless in a clairvoyant vision, but something similar to it, almost like poetic justice as in the second book, but also justice for the black widow, too, who was so badly raised by a dreadful mother. Lucia is made to suffer and die, but her mother also cannot escape from what she deserved.

I found the characters to be better developed in this story and the plot was compelling enough that I read the story in one sitting. I think the stories are improving with each book or I am getting more involved with them due to my curiosity about Ace of Diamonds and how Nameless became Nameless; that is if the author will ever show those facts to us.

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Red Rain --Nameless Book 4
B07Y8JC3RD


This one is only average, except for the good plot construction, which Dean Koontz always comes out on top. The story takes place in a city where nameless as John Watson visits a disfigured woman named Regina Belmont. Regina’s two children were killed in the fire, in which one part of her face was left unrecognizable. She was also mishandled and mistreated by the corruption in those who should be helping her.

In this story, too, Nameless has that manufactured amnesia, and Ace of Diamonds is there to fill in the blanks and help Nameless save the day or rather take Regina’s revenge from the officials and the pyromaniac, who felt more like an asylum-needing person than a criminal, to me. Here, too, nameless has the visions of the “ghostly” woman and her two children. I think, possibly, the author is using such visions to arouse reader curiosity so to be able to explain them in the last episode later.

The story moves quickly and ends with satisfaction and it does keep the reader reading, and I did enjoy reading it, but I felt it was so much less than what Dean Koontz is capable of.


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The Mercy of Snakes -Nameless Book 5
B07Z5C45XQ


Nameless as Charles Parker is again sent to get to the bottom of a crime involving elder abuse and making sure the evildoers get what they deserve. The place of the crime is Oakshore Park, a facility that houses the well-to-do elderly, on eight acres in Charlevoix at Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. The villains are Dr. Pennyman and his lover Nurse Teresa Garland, whose pole-dancer name had been Fannie Ann Tatas, but they are hailed as saintly care-givers in the community.

These two somewhat dumb criminals euthanize gullible old people in agreement with their heirs, for a substantial amount of money. Robert Dufraine is the third criminal who works with them. He is a private investigator who picks the possible target families of residents. Again, in this installment of the Nameless Series, Diamond of Ace’s unbelievable research and knowledge plays a major part.

This story, like the stories before it, has a good story arc, a plot, and characters that could be developed further. In addition, in this one, the visions of the main character and his recollections seem to multiply, which arouses the curiosity for the last book of the series.

I guess as a crime-ending-in-punishment story, this one is acceptable though still way below Dean Koontz’s talent and storytelling we have been so used to.

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Memories of Tomorrow--Nameless Book 6-
B07Y8HQ783



This story is sectioned into two. The first section is Nameless going after Chilton Cutter, a spelunker who killed his wife and kidnapped his six-year-old son. The time of the year is August and the place is the town of Corydon in Indiana.

This section wasn’t so bad. In fact, I really enjoyed Nameless’s chase of the villain inside the underground caves, to save the child from this ruthless criminal. That part of the setting I found quite original, and surely, Nameless is successful as he can’t be anything else.

In this story what complicates the chase even more are the visions and memories that haunt Nameless. So much so that they make him ask Ace to reconstruct his total amnesia.

Thus, comes the second section, in which the reader finds about what was highlighted in earlier Nameless series as the big secrets or puzzle that had to do with Nameless’s amnesia, visions, and daring, plus Ace of Diamond’s almost out-of-this-world organizing, technical knowledge, and power.

The result was a complete disappointment for me. I think it is very important for any writer, let alone an established and highly capable author, to fulfill at the end what they promise in the beginning. To tell the truth, I felt cheated due to what I thought to be a simplistic resolution.

Still, the first section was okay with a good plot and interesting setting.