Hideaway

Customer Reviews

• A gripping, well-written, fast-paced thriller  Jul 7, 2005 (31 of 32 found this helpful)

  Hatch has just survived a car wreck. Well, actually, technically he DIDN'T survive it--Hatch was clinically dead for 80 minutes. When he comes back, there is SOMETHING with him, a presence in his head...a mysterious, murderous character who calls himself Vassago, and yearns for nothing more than death and destruction...
  
  But Hatch is determined to continue his life. He and his wife adopt a child. They live happily. But Vassago is closing in. He, too, is aware of the connection with Hatch, and he would relish the opportunity to ruin Hatch's life, and kill everyone he loves...
  
  "Hideaway" is one of Koontz's all-time best...and also, as he points out in the new afterword, the first to receive hate-mail. Still, don't let a few letters get you down; "Hideaway" moves along at breakneck speeds, like most of Koontz's books, and features characters that are so real, you are genuinely afraid for--or of--them. This is one of the best books by one of the best authors out there, and shouldn't be passed up by suspense fans.

• Koontz does it again  Feb 28, 2005 (13 of 13 found this helpful)

  If you’re a serial killer lover, a thriller chaser, a supernatural addict, or just another Koontz fan, Hideway is definitely worth your time. The characters are well written, the suspense is tight, the pacing swift, the ending brutal, and the middle never lags one bit. As always, Koontz injects moral lessons in his work, and they're hard to miss, but never preached to you. This novel is not as dark as some of Koontzs other stuff, but the atmosphere fits the plot. Another Koontz for the shelf!

• A Good Koontz Novel, but there are Better Ones  Oct 19, 2006 (15 of 16 found this helpful)

  Dean Koontz is probably my favorite writer, and I have read most of his fifty or so novels. HIDEAWAY is a good Koontz novel, but I would say it ranks probably in the middle of his body of work.
  
  The first 100 pages of this book are quite spectacular, with one of the major characters suffering a near death experience. Koontz' description of this experience, and the doctor's attempts to save him, are first-rate.
  
  Unfortunately, the last 300 pages of this novel are kind of formulaic, if you've read Koontz' other novels. This novel eventually turns into another story about a depraved young serial killer stalking a young family. We get a lot of scenes from the psycho killer's point of view. HIDEAWAY then ends with a long chase scene and a big confrontation at the end between the heroes and the killer. I felt like I read variations of this story before, in novels like WHISPERS, SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT, MR. MURDER, DRAGON TEARS, THE FACE, and INTENSITY.
  
  I also felt the characterization in this novel was a bit rushed. I wish that Koontz had spend more time developing the character of Regina, a young disabled ten-year old who plays a key role in HIDEAWAY. She is an attractive character, and I wish her role in this book was larger than it ultimately was.
  
  Overall, this book is well done, but I would recommend several other Koontz books over this one, such as WATCHERS, ODD THOMAS, PHANTOMS, INTENSITY, FEAR NOTHING, COLD FIRE and the FRANKENSTEIN series.

• Fantastic read!  Mar 4, 2005 (10 of 10 found this helpful)

  After being a Stephen King fan for years and loving all that I had read, I decided to check out Dean Koontz, and Hideaway was my first. At first I was dissapointed, trying to get used to this new style of writing. It took me awhile to get into it, but when I did it hit HARD.
  
  Hatch and his wife are traveling during a snow storm and they end up in a terrible car accident, rolling the car down the side of a cliffand into a freezing river. Hatch dies and after being worked on in the emergency room, is brought back to life after being dead for a record shattering amount of time. After his accident, the couple begin to learn to love life and are having a great time, but they miss their son who died of cancer years ago and decide to adopt a child-a crippled, spunky girl named Regina. She's lived a hard life of rejection and tries to turn them off by acting like a little brat, but she soon puts down her defenses and accepts their love and shows the sweet girl that she really is.
  
  But it seems that Hatch's time in the land of the dead has done something to his mind. He's now seeing visions of murder and mayhem that terrify him and make him fear for his sanity. And now a vicious young killer is aware of Hatch's presence and is determined to track him down and kill him and his family.
  
  The hellish setting at the amusement park was truly captivating, as was the killer's gruesome memory of pushing his friend off of an indoor roller coaster at a young age. It really sends shivers up your spine. The entire book was captivating as is the killer. He's young, handsome, and eerily polite, but he's a crazed demon man.
  
  All in all, it's definetely one of my favorite books ever, an excellent introduction to Koontz, and I do look forward to reading it again. Intensity was my favorite, though.

• Sometimes when you come back from the dead, something comes with you  Feb 8, 2006 (6 of 6 found this helpful)

  Hatch and Lindsey Harrison were driving in a March snowstorm when a beer truck drives their Honda off the road, down an embankment, and into a frozen lake. Lindsey frantically frees Hatch from the car before he can drown, but his wounds are too much and by the time the ambulance gets there he is dead. However, at the hospital Dr. Jonas Nyebern decides that because Hatch was in freezing water he is dead . . . but retrievable, even though it has been more than an hour. Miraculously, Nyebern resuscitates Hatch and given this second chance, the Harrisons celebrate each day they have been given. But then people who have done the Harrisons wrong start to die violently and we know before he does that there is a connection between his death and this evil.
  
  Readers of modern horror stories will see some similarities between the initial situation that Dean Koontz has set up in "Hideaway" and Stephen King's "The Dead Zone." But whereas Johnny Smith always had the gift of foresight, Hatch Harrison finds himself trapped in a new world. Hatch remembers nothing of what happened during the time he was dead, but now he is having terrible visions. At first he thinks they are nightmares, but of course he is seeing horrible things that are really happening. If he did come back from the white light then it appears he brought something back when he was revived. Doubting his own innocence, Hatch is concerned for his family, which consists of not only Lindsey but also their newly adopted daughter, Regina, who wears a clunky leg brace and has a deformed right hand. Whatever is out there, it wants them all and it wants them for something big.
  
  For me the set up of "Hideaway" is better than the payoff at the abandoned amusement park, which is a common complaint with me for books by both Koontz and King, not to mention most horror films. What is going on turns out to be something simpler than what I was thinking, which is then escalated to Satanic heights, which ends up constituting overkill for me. Then again, like with King's "The Stand," I definitely appreciate that Koontz told this story by bringing in both sides of the struggle as active participants. Far too often horror stories lay out the dark side without counterbalancing it with anything and leaving the main characters trapped against a wall instead of being caught in the middle, which is definitely what you get in this book. I was almost tempted to round up on the basis of how the Shakespeare quote at the start of the novel played out, but not quite.