The guard
Der Wächter (Original: The Face , 2003) is a 2005 German language detective novel by Dean Koontz, enriched with elements of fantastic literature . The author deals here specifically with the subjects of "life after death" and "guardian angel".
action
The purpose of life of the anarchist and university professor Corky Laputa is to contribute to the destruction of society through criminal acts. His arsenal ranges from inciting neighborhoods to lavishly distributing drugs to teenagers or poisoned candy to children.
After his everyday misdeeds no longer give him any real satisfaction, Laputa plans a big coup: He intends to kidnap the ten-year-old son of the Hollywood star Channing Manheim, who is repeatedly referred to as the “greatest film star of all time”. In order to achieve maximum uncertainty among the population, he plans to slowly torture the child to death over a period of weeks and to make the individual stages of decay available to the sensational press via photos and videos. He has been “practicing” this for weeks on a colleague, an English professor, whose views he disagreed with. With a great deal of technical effort - he uses a zeppelin - he manages to break into the film star's property, which has been converted into a high-security wing, shortly before Christmas, when most of the staff is on early Christmas vacation. The guards are anesthetized with gas, only the former detective and now Manheim's security chief, Ethan Truman, can offer desperate resistance. His guardian angel - his recently deceased childhood friend Dunny - intervenes again and again and thus ultimately prevents the planned crime.
Koontz occasionally weaves humorous passages into his dark works. So here too: The guardian angel has a superior, Typhon, to whom he has to report regularly. Arbitrariness and the exceeding of competences result in warnings. In the event of excessive violations of the rules, there is even a risk of withdrawal of the mandate.
literature
- Dean Koontz, The Guardian (German by Bernhard Kleinschmidt), Heyne Verlag 2005. ISBN 978-3-453-43199-7