Dean Koontz/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: So far, only TWO of Dean Koontz's villains can be pitied.
  • Roy from The Voice of the Night is a sociopathic 15 year old kid who has killed at least three people, two of them on purpose. Everything about the character makes you hate him even more, until you learn that he accidentally killed his sister when he was a child, and ever since then his mother treated him like complete shit. In the end, the heroes take pity on him and call the police in hopes to help him.
  • Bruno Frye from Whispers. Where to even begin? In a nut shell, Catherine gave birth to identical twins and raised them into believing they were one person. When one Bruno did something wrong, she'd punish both. When one Bruno did something good, she'd reward both. If they ever acted as if they were two people, she would lock them in a cellar filled with bugs. Said bugs caused the twins to scream so much that their voice boxes were permanently damaged, this also gave them constant nightmares that always resulted in them waking up and remembering the cellar, even as they grew up. Now adults, the two Brunos (still believing themselves to be one) are still traumatized and kill anyone wo resembles their mom. When one of the twins actually dies, this drives the other one insane, wondering how he can be alive and dead at the same time. Basically, he's still a Complete Monster, but he's the most sympathetic villain Dean Koontz has created.
  • What, no mention of the Outsider from Watchers? If the stolen Mickeys don't break you, it begging to be killed during the climax will.
  • What about all the guys Victor Helios created in the FRANKENSTEIN trilogy? They were created without the ability to feel hope, unable to have anything good in their lives, created by a man who thinks that positive emotions are useless, and they're the most pitiable creatures that ever graced a novel! From the boy who was created autistic so that Helios could have free slave labor that didn't need to stop working to eat or excrete to the household staff that are slowly losing their grips on reality, these guys even inspire pity in the novels' protagonists.
• Anvilicious: Particularly when it comes to Christian themes or Libertarian philosophy.
  • One Door Away from Heaven suggest anyone who in any way, shape, or form supports utilitarian bioethics is the next thing to a Nazi.
• Broken Aesop: The Taking, like many of Koontz's recent works, is essentially one big Author Tract on the downfall of Western civilization. So apparently the solution is the TOTAL GLOBAL GENOCIDE of all insufficiently virtuous adults, including many a Fate Worse Than Death.
  • Really? I always took it as a modern re-telling of the Noah's Ark story. The novel even ties in to Noah's Ark at two points - Render mentions it early on, and in the epilogue, Molly asks her husband what prompted God to cause the Flood. And "Total Global Genocide" is actually what happened according to the story of the Ark, with a new group left behind to carry on life. According to the Bible story, nobody except Noah, his wife, their three adult sons, and their wives were left behind, whereas in Koontz's story, many adult humans and all the children survived; also, many humans who did not "survive" were shown going to heaven - according to the children who lost family members, some of them were happy and laughing as they were taken. So, if, as many theologians believe, the Flood did not literally wipe out all humanity except Noah's family, the way the world looked to Molly and her husband probably looked a lot like that to the survivors of the Deluge. Also, keep in mind Koontz is Catholic, and doesn't hold with most dooms-day beliefs, so it's more logical to see this as a re-telling of the Ark story, since the events Koontz portrays couldn't happen in a universe where we're awaiting the Second Coming. Finally, I wouldn't see this as a "solution," but instead as a warning about the consequences our actions have for ourselves. Remember, Neil, Molly's husband, was a priest who broke his vows and left the Church, so he's hardly a saint, and Molly seems to have her share of sorrow for her sins, too.
• Canon Sue - Most of the child characters.
  • May be a more general Children Are Innocent + The Power of Love. Sometimes the children are powerful (Winter Moon), and sometimes they just get kidnapped by the serial killer (Hideaway)
• Complete Monster - Many of his villains are violent sociopaths with no redeeming or humanizing qualities whatsoever.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Specifically in his earlier works.
  • The Retro Virus in Fear Nothing and Seize The Night, and what it does to the infected. Also the things that occur in the egg room in Fort Wyvern. Plenty of his villains and their actions are worthy of mention. Chances are if its a non-satirical Koontz story, parts of it venture into very scary territory.
• Jumping the Shark - According to many reviews on Amazon, Koontz has done this quite a few times, namely with Darkest Evening of the Year, One Door Away From Heaven, Your Heart Belongs to Me, the last two Frankenstein books, and Breathless. Seriously, Breathless involves all of humanity's problem's being solved by the inexplicable appearance of adorable talking simians? What if we can't feed them all?
• Moral Event Horizon - Koontz is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that the readers absolutely despise the villain and everything the villain stands for.
• Paranoia Fuel - The entire plot of False Memory, especially for anyone who has ever visited a therapist. The Big Bad is a psychiatrist who mind rapes his patients and forces them to do all kinds of things for his own entertainment. He implanted many of their phobias in the first place, and once he's done screwing with them (sometimes literally), he often drives them to creative suicides and/or homicides. He was doing this for twenty years before somebody finally figured it out.
• Shocking Swerve: Unfortunately this is how many, many of the conflicts in his stories are resolved. When his heroes are facing impossible odds, he'll have an angel show up, or reveal that an autistic child has superpowers and teleported the villain away or can summon and control bats.
• Tear Jerker : Numerous moments can qualify, especially those involving apparent character deaths, flashbacks, or musings on the world at large.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Roy from The Voice of the Night is the ONLY villain from Dean Koontz's work who isn't a Complete Monster.