Koko

Peter Straub
Completed 11/25/2022, Reviewed 11/25/2022
3 stars

This is a really good best-seller type novel.  However, it won the 1989 World Fantasy Award, so I was expecting some fantasy element.  Horror also often appears on fantasy award lists, so when I realized no fantasy elements were forthcoming, I figured this would be a horror novel.  But it turned out to be a straight-forward murder mystery.  No horror elements other than the horrors of war and human evil.  Disappointing. 

The story revolves around four Vietnam vets who come together to see new Memorial in Washington, D.C.  They come to find out about murders that have happened in southeast Asia that all have the same elements, missing eye, missing ear, and a playing card in the victim’s mouth with the word “Koko” written on it.  The thing is, they know Koko from their time during the war.  They were all present for an atrocity that happened during the war and Koko seems to be related to that.  Instead of going to the police, they try to solve it murders themselves.  Then when one of their own is murdered, the ante goes way up, because they may be next.

As a general thriller type novel, this was pretty good.  It was very long, like a lot of the best-selling horror and thriller books of forty years ago.  See Stephen King and Dean Koontz.  Lots of details about the characters that are tangential to the plot.  A lot of flashbacks to Vietnam to explain the terrible tragedy that the lieutenant was court martialed for.  A lot of PTSD.  The book felt long and often lost momentum.  I think if this book were written today, it would have been more like 400 pages rather than 600.   

The character development is pretty good.  I did come to like each of the four vets, even the crazy one.  They stayed true to character throughout the book.  One vet not in the original four was even gay, and the writer didn’t kill him off or resort to homophobia in his character arc.  For that I was grateful.  Michael Poole is the main character, taking up most of the page space.  A pediatrician in a crumbling marriage, he wants to leave his cushy practice in the suburbs for a private practice for the needy in the Bronx.  I liked him even though he went through most of the book in an emotionless state.

If I knew this was not fantasy, I would have probably rated this book higher, but I give it three stars out of five.  It’s hard to rate a book high when you’re disappointed with it.  Also, I thought the prose was very mediocre.  The prose and form of the book reminded me of an episode of the animated series “Daria” where her friend tells the head cheerleader that Daria is sick with “brain fever” and nothing that reading a couple of best-sellers couldn’t cure.  This book could have been one of those best-sellers.