Life Expectancy

Dean Koontz is one of those rare authors who can convincingly write a novel about a family of murderous clowns and how they terrorize nocturnal baker Jimmy Tock and his family. Furthermore, Koontz does so with an astounding sense of optimism. Like most Koontz novels, Life Expectancy is well written, scary, and, at the same time, funny. It takes a talented reader to successfully perform a book like this, and actor John Bedford Lloyd does so marvelously. It would be easy for a reader to overemphasize the story's gruesomeness or to succumb to a singsong tone, yet Lloyd never falls into that trap. While Lloyd's portrayal of Jimmy Tock is terrific, it is the personalities he gives to the rest of the Tock family, as well as the clowns and other evil circus performers, that make the reading superb and the listening so memorable. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine