People are killed and injured, and a reconnection with the sociopathic Beezo family occurs. When the first of the predicted terrible days happens, it is, indeed, a bad day. Little Jimmy has a wonderful, happy life growing up with his baker parents, learning the family trade and enjoying their small-town life. Jimmy’s first day is pretty rough, actually, because right after Josef dies, a sociopathic circus clown, Konrad Beezo, goes on a rampage when his wife dies giving birth to his son and shoots and kills the attending doctor and a nurse.īeezo runs off with his newborn baby and escapes after telling Jimmy Tock’s father: “I’ll never forget you, Rudy Tock. But with his last breaths, grandfather Tock made 10 predictions – among them five dates in Jimmy’s life that would be horrible. “Life Expectancy” is the story of Jimmy Tock, who was born at the same minute his grandfather, Josef Tock, died. After all, it’s Koontz.īut we can’t help but think that if he had taken a little more time in its writing it would be meatier, would be a better book.
Still, it’s moderately involving and ultimately charming. It’s like a half-hour “Twilight Zone” script stretched to two-hour feature length – too little butter smeared over too much toast, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. Such a near miss is “Life Expectancy,” which is eerie but also overwritten and obvious. Some of his books, such as “The Face,” are deep, wonderful stories that somehow combine creepy scares with real charm and an optimistic faith in humanity. “Compulsive” may be the word to describe his output, which is two novels a year or more. Give him a sharp pencil and a sheet of paper, and in a few days he’d probably hand back a new novel, scribbled in very tiny letters.
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