When Koontz talks about the possibility of future “Nameless” books he refers to them as “seasons,” lingo he picked up from his colleagues at Amazon. His nameless vigilante has visions but can’t tell if they are memories shaking loose from his fractured past or warnings from a future he’s hurtling toward.Īlthough each thriller is a stand-alone story - like episodes in a television series - the visions intensify as the series progresses. In Koontz’s fiction, as in life, the past has a way of asserting itself in the present. But when you’re a writer it just so happens that your work brings you to think about these things.” Something he did that I didn’t want to think about anymore … I do believe the very uncomfortable things in life we have a tendency to put away and just not contemplate. “I would start writing a scene,” Koontz explains, “and it would hit me that something in the scene, some little twist of a moment, came from my father.

He says his father was a violent alcoholic who made life hell for his wife and son. Koontz is drawn to exploring the way our memories, or lack thereof, protect us from the truth. Along with brainwashing and repressed memories, amnesia turns up again and again in Koontz’s milieu. It’s an escape from something he doesn’t want to know.”Īmnesia is to thrillers what evil twins are to soap operas. “While I thought it was interesting that, yes, he has amnesia,” Koontz says, “he believes he had it engineered. The protagonist can quickly memorize the details for his next mission, but he doesn’t remember anything about his own past, including his name. The first is “ In the Heart of the Fire (Nameless Book 1).” The stories are linked by a man without a past on a mission to take down criminals who are exceptionally evil: kidnappers, pedophiles and serial murderers. “Nameless” isn’t a novel, but a collection of six short thrillers.

In the heart of the fire dean koontz