„He is nameless in a world where nearly everything is named down to the smallest microbes, and yet it is a world of deep and enduring mysteries, including the meaning of it all. He is like the current in a circuit, a power to be reckoned with, and yet he wonders: What is the force that through the circuit drives the current?“

Beautiful prose by Dean Koontz

The second entry in the “Nameless” series is even better than the first, which surprised me, because I almost did not continue at all. That “Amazon Original Story” tag on the cover bothers me more than it probably should. I do not like Amazon, and I do not like books being served to me the way fast fashion is served: cheap, disposable, engineered for the next click. It feels like the opposite of what a book should be. And yet, somewhere in the first twenty pages, this one had me.

„A self-styled artist is getting away with murder in Death Valley. If all goes well, so will Nameless. In part two of the Nameless series, the relentless avenger is haunted by nightmares of the past and visions of what’s to come. Palmer Oxenwald’s hunting ground is the Mojave wasteland. His victims are random tourists and hikers. His trophies are cherished photographs of the damage he’s done. His greatest threat is Nameless. Two men with one thing in common: memories of the dead. For a psychopath like Palmer, they’re a clear rush in black and white. For Nameless, they’re visions of violence buried and erased. But for how long?“

Blurb

Part of that is the prose. Koontz writes beautifully without letting the beauty get in the way. The sentences never block the plot; they wait for the right moment, a pause between scenes or the closing lines, and only then allow themselves to be lovely. That restraint is a craft in itself, and it is rarer than it sounds.

The other part is the story, and here I want to be honest: it is not the most original thing I have read. But originality is not really what it is selling. This has the feel of something that could have stepped straight out of the 1990s, and I mean that as a compliment. I grew up on “Mission: Impossible” and the rest of that decade’s television, the clean setups, the confident pacing, the sense that a plot could simply do its job without apologising for itself. Reading this scratches exactly that itch, and Koontz clearly knows the mode well enough to work inside it rather than just imitate it.

So the tag still annoys me. The series does not. It is short, it is well made, and it seems to be getting better as it goes. Another four-star read, and I will keep going.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you’d like to read this book, I’d be glad if you ordered it through this link. The price stays the same for you and I receive a small share. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

📝 If you are looking for my own short stories, poems and texts, check out my Substack: https://substack.com/@fragmentsandthedark