THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JANE HAWK SERIES Meet Jane Hawk—a remarkable new heroine certain to become an icon of suspense. “This gripping thriller grabs readers from the first few pages and sweeps them along to the rousing finale.”—Booklist “I very much need to be dead.”These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for—but took his own life. … behind by a man who had everything to live for—but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what.
People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important—so terrifying—that they will exterminate anyone in their way.
But all their power and viciousness may not be enough to stop a woman as clever as they are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless—and who is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.
Don’t miss any of Dean Koontz’s gripping Jane Hawk thrillers:
THE SILENT CORNER • THE WHISPERING ROOM • THE CROOKED STAIRCASE • THE FORBIDDEN DOOR • THE NIGHT WINDOW
Praise for The Silent Corner
“Gripping . . . The paranoia and mystery increase as the story unfolds. . . . Koontz has created [a] wonderful character in Jane Hawk. . . . Koontz rocks it again.”—Associated Press
“In this era of stingy text-message prose, Mr. Koontz is practically Shakespeare. . . . The Silent Corner brims with both action and emotion.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The Silent Corner is vintage Dean Koontz: paranoia-fueled suspense . . . sleek and highly realized action, developed characters, and more twists and turns than any two ordinary novels combined. . . . As relevant to current events as it is audacious . . . amongst Dean Koontz’s finest contemporary work.”—Mystery Scene
“A proven specialist in action scenes, Koontz pulls off some doozies here. . . . The book is full of neat touches. . . . And the prose, as always in a Koontz novel, is first-rate. Perhaps Koontz’s leanest, meanest thriller, this initial entry in a new series introduces a smart, appealing heroine who can outthink as well as outshoot the baddest of bad dudes.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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What can one FBI agent do against billions of dollars in mind-controlling tech and corrupt government entities? A whole helluva lot! This book is so action-packed and well-written, I couldn’t put it down. Jane Hawk is a grieving widow and scared mother, but she’s not letting the bad guys stop her from saving her son’s future. I’m on to the next book and I can’t wait to finish reading it!
Smart, original, always so well-written, and always with heart in the midst of the action. Love the Jane Hawk series!
To me, Dean Koontz has always walked on the supernatural/horror side of the genre line, a side I’ve never been much interested in. I read two of his straight-ahead thrillers (Velocity and Intensity) some years back when I was learning to write fiction; both more than lived up to their titles and taught me a thing or two about narrative drive. Recently I’ve been reading thrillers with female protagonists (since I’m writing one) and found out that Koontz has a series of such. So here we are.
Jane Hawk, Our Heroine, is an FBI agent who went rogue after her husband supposedly committed suicide under extremely odd circumstances. Using casework as therapy, she’s discovered a rash of purported suicides among happy, high-achieving people around the country. The autopsies are incomplete or simply missing. As is typical in stories such as this, her poking around the margins draws the interest of very powerful, highly nasty shadow people whose efforts to drive her into an early grave have instead given her the incentive to take her fight to the Big Bad, whomever and wherever he/she/it may be.
That’s where we meet her. It gets worse for her from there.
Jane is, as you might imagine, a tough cookie, adept with firearms as well as close-quarters combat, and quite willing to go through or over whomever gets in her way. She’s stripped her life down to the barest of essentials — cheap hotels, fake IDs, hair dye, few belongings, and a multitude of burner phones. (Any resemblance to Reacher is, I assume, semi-coincidental, though David Baldacci’s Long Road to Mercy does the same thing with series heroine Atlee Pine.) Jane left her son (also under threat by the shadow people) with semi-friends out in the boonies, cashed out the house she shared with the now-dead husband, and is off the grid.
The plot is a standard-issue one-(wo)man-against-the-evil-global-conspiracy tale, wherein the conspirators have almost unlimited power and resources and Our Heroine is always one step ahead of being squashed like a bug. While this isn’t one of Koontz’s fantasy/horror/supernatural extravaganzas, nanotechnology guest-stars as magic and the Big Bad’s endless legions are essentially zombies without the bad complexion. Jane finds a clue, takes out some bad guys, moves to the next level, and so on until her struggle with the level boss in the over-the-top climax sets her up for the sequel.
Settings are sketched well enough to see without a lot of detail. The dialog is functional if sometimes on-the-nose. The book’s big asset is speed: even if you’re as distractible as I was, you’ll flow effortlessly from one chapter/setup to the next and the pages of this brick of a paperback (500+ pages, big type) will melt away like green-faced witches after a dousing.
The minuses? It’s a fairly soulless affair; Jane’s jettisoned so much of her life that she doesn’t have any left to share with us or anyone else. The game metaphor I used a couple of paragraphs back is apt in more ways than one. The prose is occasionally baroque-to-stilted, like the author is trying too hard. Koontz couldn’t stop at making Jane steely and kick-ass — she’s also borderline beautiful, which both gilds the lily and stretches our suspension of disbelief overmuch. The bad guys are bad because they can be. The point to their whole taking-over-the-world scheme is never developed to any great extent, nor is there an explanation for how it scales from thousands of people to billions. These problems carved around a star and a half off my score; it took a lot of thought to round up to four stars rather than down to three. It might have gone differently on another day with another mood.
The Silent Corner is an exercise in narrative speed triumphing over emotional engagement. The story’s supersaturation of paranoia probably won’t be healthy for you in the long run, but you can ride it through Our Heroine’s ups and downs and have a reasonably satisfying time. If all this sounds good, there are four more just waiting for you. The sequel (The Whispering Room)(600+ pages!) will likely stay on my shelf for a good long time until I’m ready for another date with Jane.
Hi this is Jay from NC I would enjoy looking and reading this book soon dean please send me a message on here or email me [email protected]
In Jane Hawk, Koontz has created a character who’s willing to break some rules to do what’s right. She’s plowing through a devastating loss, and driven to find those responsible… and potentially much, much more.
This book was both interesting and compelling, and I’ve already bought the second book in this five-book series.
Dean Koontz has a way of explaining or writing things that you can close your eyes and picture it like it’s right in front of you while you’re reading the book you feel like you’re literally right there with the main character that’s why I love Dean Koontz.
Dean Koontz at the top of his game.
This author still has it, people. The man can write a tale that leaves readers begging for the next book. He had it 30 years ago, when I read my first Koontz book, and he still has it today.
The Silent Corner is one of those storylines that grab you from the get-go and never lets go. Jane Hawk is one of the strongest female characters I’ve read in a long time. The story line is fascinating. The suspense is totally gripping. The writing is…well, this is Dean Koontz, after all. The writing is phenomenal.
I won’t rehash the story line, which is available everywhere the book sells. Just know this: There’s absolutely nothing to criticize about The Silent Corner. Some say Koontz’s style changed over the years, and it probably did. We all change with time, and as we change, so does our way of communicating. I loved this author through every ‘change,’ because one thing remained unchanging throughout the years: Dean Koontz can write. He can tell a story better than all but a couple of other authors that I’m aware of, and he holds his own even with them. His stories never disappoint, and The Silent Corner certainly doesn’t. I was glued to the pages from start to finish.
Unpredictable. Unforgettable. Fascinating. Thought-provoking. Endless heart-pounding excitement. Yes, it’s really that good.
Off to read The Whispering Room. Another Jane Hawk story? I’m already there!
Just a quick review here, as there are a lot of twists and turns in this book.
What I will say is, this isn’t a straight-up crime thriller. It’s something of a technothriller with a hint of horror thrown in, although not Stephen King or Blumehouse type horror. It’s more subtle than that.
Overall, you do have to take a couple of leaps in terms of the tech side and just go with it, and there is the occasional lag in momentum, but I never got outright bored, and I always wanted to turn the page.
Word of warning, although this phase of the story resolves, and it’s a satisfying conclusion to the novel, there is a wider story at work here, and it looks like the full arc might be 5 books long. It’s a little vexing when this happens, but it’s not an outright cliffhanger.
In summary, a good, solid techno-thriller with a horror edge that keeps the pages turning. I’ve picked up the next book already, so I’m sure I’ll be reading that shortly.
Koontz has a way of being so descriptive that you feel like you’re running with Jane the whole time.
This book is part of a terrific series. I read and loved them all.
Predictable
Koontz doubles up on anything King ever wrote . Plus Koontz rips your head off, hides it somewhere, then slowly feeds you just enough information to gain it back by the end of the story…Well done on all his books.
I’ve always been a fan of Koontz, and this book was another worth adding to your list. It did start a little slower for me than many other thrillers, but there was definitely forward momentum in each chapter and the general premise kept me reading to a satisfying conclusion.
Re-read 5/12-5/13/19 and now off to read/re-read the rest of the series.
A conspiracy story to top all conspiracy stories
First off, I would have rated this story 4 1/2 stars if I could have. The only reason for that was I got to the very end of this book before finding out it is book#1 in the Jane Hawk series. I was happy thinking this was a standalone book because I tend to get tired of series books. Most don’t hold up the forward momentum from the first book. Also, all my questions didn’t get answered by the end of the book (crying like the big baby I am).
To the good parts – all the rest of the book. I felt like I was back reading one of Koontz’s first books, like WATCHERS, which made me fall in love with this author so many years ago.
Jane Hawk is one bad**s tough female protagonist. She is a Marine widow, her Colonel husband having committed suicide just a few months back. Jane doesn’t believe he would killed himself, leaving her and their son behind to pick up the pieces. So she starts investigating and finds that unexplained suicides are on an upswing across the country and, as she delves into the whys, her and her son are threatened. And she, in no way, shape, or form, is going to stand for that.
Loved the character of Jane Hawk. I loved the storyline. I loved the ebb and flow of Koontz’s prose. I’ve been disappointed with quite a few of his newest books but not this one. THE SILENT CORNER gets everything right.
I received this book from Bantam Books through Net Galley and through the Amazon VINE program in exchange for my unbiased review.
It wasn’t a bad book, it was just slow and tedious in many areas. I came close to the end then read reviews saying it had no real ending and would not be concluded till the next book. I have since found out it took 5 books to finish the story, needless to say I opted out after finishing the first one.
This is the first and likely the last Dean Koontz book I will read. The charachters were for the most part cartoonish. The plot was action filled but not really necessary for the plot. The most grievous sin was not making it plain that this was the first part of a series. I feel used.
Absolutely loved it! Always love Dean’s books!
This is a great series
Very disappointed.
Love Jane Hawk!