For four years I have read Dean Koontz novels and have generally come away from these books satisfied by the story and the swift pace of his writing. Like Stephen King, Koontz writes in a way that forces the reader to advance swiftly through the novel. He approaches a story from several characters and mixes the views of these characters; he generally writes short sentences; he ends chapters with a hook that leads the reader into the next chapter and he makes the story and the characters interesting.

So perhaps I read Koontz’s latest book, One Door Away From Heaven too swiftly. Perhaps this speed blinded me to the book’s virtues. Perhaps it really wasn’t one of the worst bollixed-up, mish-mashed pieces of tripe that I have ever read.

Certainly this appeared to be the case. I actually re-read the jacket of the book to see if the publisher had put any hints into the description of the book, any clues as to why this poor novel ever saw the light of day. But no, the publisher’s blurb stated that “This is Dean Koontz at his very best, and it doesn’t get any better than that.”

I might quibble with the publisher over the use of the words “very best” — you’re either at your best or you’re not, best is a superlative and therefore can’t be very anything — but this hyperinflated description of an incoherent, ridiculous, and ultimately silly work by a decent suspense writer reveals that the publisher is either desperate to sell the book or is just too thick to recognize sheer awfulness when it pounds him in the face.

Like many of Koontz’s novels, this is a hunter-prey story, with various evildoers seeking the destruction of the old, the infirm, and the alien (from another planet, not from another country). Preston Maddoc is a sort of Doctor Death who delights in ridding the human race of those whom he deems unfit for life. He also has a fanatical interest in UFOs and so zips around the country investigating sightings and trying to make contact with those whom he is convinced founded the human race.

In this book he is pursuing both his stepdaughter, a 9-year-old genius, Leilani, who has a deformed left leg and a withered left hand, and an alien disguised as a boy. Aided by Michelina Bellsong, an adult who is battling a hard past and alcoholism, Leilani escapes from Preston Maddoc. Micky tries to track Leilani down, and both are drawn toward a shared fate with a motherless boy and a homeless dog.

To tell more would be to give away this improbable plot, and I’m not sure I’m up to it anyway.

What is unfortunate about One Door Away From Heaven is that Koontz discusses at length some vital ideas. There are more and more people, for example, who believe that aliens instead of any sort of god created man. Koontz answers this question by asking simply: “One problem with the theory. If incomprehensibly intelligent aliens made this world and everything in it — who made the aliens?”

Much more important is Koontz’s investigation into euthanasia. In both the United States and Europe, there is a growing trend toward utilitarian bioethics. As Koontz writes in the “Author’s Note” at the end of the novel:

“This philosophy embodies the antihuman essence of fascism, expresses the contempt for individual freedom and for the disabled and the frail that has in the past marked every form of totalitarianism. One day our great universities will be required to redeem themselves from the shame of having honored and promulgated ethicists who would excuse and facilitate the killing of the disabled, the weak, and the elderly.”

We have, as Koontz states, become utilitarian in our approach to life; we jabber on about how much it costs to support a newborn baby or an old geezer in a public nursing home, yet at the same time we manage to come up with the money to support a massive bureaucracy, to promote benefits, boondoggles, and tax breaks for half the world, and to bomb the hell out of the other half (giving them more money to tidy up after we’ve bombed them). Many of these bioethicists are advocating doing what the Nazis did, but because they are more sanitary in their approach, because they make these decisions in nice air-conditioned rooms decorated with ferns and diplomas hanging on the wall, and with elevator music mingling with conversation, they don’t feel like Nazis.

Koontz, however, fails to make this point strongly enough in One Door Away From Heaven. Good basic ideas. Tolerable writing. Terrible plot and characters weak as water.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville and can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)