Date: 2008-05-16 16:28 Subject: My Travel Habits & The Good Guy Security: Public Location: Living room Mood: tired Music: David Bowie - China Girl

I like to travel, yet I tend to dislike groups of people. I'm not anti-social or afraid or nervous in groups or anything, I just don't like large crowds that slow me down and get in my way. Beyond that, I generally hate sitting next to people on planes that feel the constant need to gab about shit I don't care about. Note to anyone who make occupy the seat next to me: I don't care about your kids. I don't care about your sales presentation. I don't care where you are from, or where you are going. I don't care how long you've been married, or if you are flying home from having an affair and you just need to tell someone. What I do care about is getting that huge metal coffin we're trapped in on and off the ground as quickly and safely as possible. Beyond that, I just prefer it if people eat their peanuts and keep to themselves.

Because of this, I try to quietly pass the time I am in the air as best I can. I'll sleep if I can, and if I can't I'll listen to music (or pretend to by just having my earphones on to discourage conversation), or I'll read. Since I was taking an unplanned trip to Washington DC this week, I decided to pick up a new book at the airport bookstore. After scanning the shelves for a few, I landed on the Bestsellers section and saw Dean Koontz's "The Good Guy" in the #1 spot. I'm not really a Koontz fan or anything. I consider a lot of his horror to be cheap knockoffs of Stephen King, but this one sounded different:

According to the back cover it was a "pulse-pounding thriller that starts with a terrifying decision: Help -- or run. Timothy Carter is an ordinary guy who enjoys a beer after work. But tonight is no ordinary night. The jittery man sitting beside him has mistaken Tim for someone else -- and passes him an envelope stuffed with cash and the photo of a pretty woman. 'Ten thousand now: You get the rest when she's gone.' Now everything he thought he knew -- even about himself -- will be challenged. For Tim Carter is the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer as relentless as evil incarnate. But first he must discover resources within himself that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be ... The Good Guy."

Ok. Reluctant hero? Check. Damsel in distress? Check. Mystery and suspense? Check. A killer who is "evil incarnate"? Check. Sounded like it would at least give me something to do while crammed into a middle seat for the next few hours, so I picked it up.

To be honest, I enjoyed about the first two-thirds of the book. The whole concept of being mistaken for a hitman, and put into a situation where you can just walk away and let an innocent person die, or risk your own life to save another is pretty intriguing. I like the character of Tim Carter, a "normal" everyday brick mason who goes from having a beer at the local pub, to being on the run for his life from a hired killer. It was entertaining. I always like that kind of thing. Put normal people into extraordinary situations, and you really can find out what they are made of.

I especially admired the character of Krait, the obsessive-compulsive, megalomaniac hitman who not only was ruthless in his pursuit, but who also had a creepy fucking oral fetish when it came to his victims. This guy literally takes up pages of text either dreaming of what he'll force his next victim to choke on, or looking back fondly at what he's forced down the throats of his previous targets. It may have been a little over the top, but it definitely got the whole "this son of a bitch is insane" point across.

All things considered, the book is paced rather well. Between two flights and a brief layover, I had read all 447 pages by the time I touched down in Baltimore. The problems I have with the book all came about in the last third of it when all the loose end started to be tied up. I'm not a fan of giving away spoilers, and I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but the way the ending of this book was handled was cheap and unsatisfying in my opinion.

First off, it turns out that whole mystery behind why someone would want the girl dead is a pretty thin excuse for political intrigue. The majority of the book is spent trying to figure out the motivation for why someone would put a hit on her, and when you finally discover it, it just feels slapped together with scotch tape. Certainly Koontz could have come up with something better. I've seen X-Files episodes that were more plausible.

Also, our "normal" hero isn't quite so normal after all. Turns out he's really a war hero from the Gulf War with a Congressional Medal of Honor who saved innocent civilians in a valiant last stand. So much for him trying to "transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy". He was a boyscout the entire time. He may have been down in the dumps a bit at the start of the book, but it wasn't like he was some heartless bastard who underwent some major change under stress or anything. When this is revealed later in the story, it is handled in such a cheesy manner that I wish the book would have come with crackers. To be honest, I think it cheapens the entire concept of the story. It is far more compelling to me to see someone who is a complete bastard find the strength and compassion within himself to become a hero when the chips are down, rather than someone who was always good from the start. If you want a small example of what I am talking about, then check out Dustin Hoffman in the movie Hero.

Maybe I was expecting too much from the #1 Bestseller in the country, but come on. Everything is wrapped up so nice and neat at the end of the book that it was pathetic. The only thing that would have made it more so would be to have the hero in a white cowboy hat ride off into the sunset with the woman he saved. I'm not saying that the good guys shouldn't win, but if you want to make it convincing, then you need to put your work in and not take shortcuts full of cliches. Overall it felt like a book that was written to be a Bestseller, like watered down top 40 music often is, rather than a real legitimate and intelligent piece of fiction that *deserved* to be a Bestseller. It was a real let down, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to others.

If you want to read a far, far better book about what normal people are like under extrodinary circumstances, then I'd suggest you pick up Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. I loved the movie, but I may have enjoyed the book it was based on even more. It was a far better story all around, and when it was over I didn't feel like it needed to be twisted up in a bubblegum wrapper like I did with the Koontz book.

More on my actual DC trip soon. I am pretty worn out from my trip still, and I need to feed.