You’re name is Mitch Rafferty. You’re a gardener. You have no past as a cop, spy, or Navy SEAL–you’re just a plain old petunias and begonias guy. You’re working in someone’s yard when you get a call on your cell phone. You answer. And the guy on the other end has your wife.
He tells you that you will get him two million dollars or you’ll never see her again.
You’re lost. This has to be a sick prank. You’re just a gardener. You know peat moss and mulch. You don’t have two million. Heck, you have, at the most, $11,000 in the bank. You tell him this. He tells you he knows.
Then your wife screams over the phone. The wife who you love, who makes you whole. They let her talk. It’s not just one man. And then, just to show you that they’re serious, they kill a complete stranger who is walking a dog across the road. They shoot him in the head. You know they’re watching you. You look around and can’t see where the sniper is hiding.
You’re a gardener. They have your wife. If you go to the cops, they kill her. If you don’t deliver, they kill her. What do you do?
That’s the premise of Dean Koontz’s The Husband. I listened to this on audio book, read by Holter Graham, and, folks, I don’t think a book has gripped me like this in a very long time. And that despite some quirks in the reader’s presentation. I’m coming to respect Koontz as a writer more and more. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Go get it. Read it. Do it before they make the movie.
