buy After the Last Race by Dean Koontz at Amazon
Author: Dean Koontz
Release date: November, 1974
Media: Hardcover
ISBN: 0689106211
Well, if you're going to write genre novels, you might
as well cover every genre. This is Koontz' first, and
really only, attempt at a straight hardboiled-style
thriller. A loose-knit gang of would-be thieves have a
plan to hold up a racetrack on a day when there will
be at least two million dollars on the premises.
Simple, easy to understand, with some nice plot twists
and excellent characterization. Koontz takes a
jaundiced look at the excesses of the seventies and
the excesses of thriller writers like Spillane all in
one gulp.
This is one of the longest novels Koontz wrote before
becoming a superstar, and one gets the feeling he was
testing his expansiveness legs, as it were.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well here as
it does in much longer books (e.g. Whispers or The
House of Thunder); the first fifty pages, especially,
are slow as molasses. Once it picks up, though, it
picks up fast.
This may well be the hardest Dean Koontz novel on the
planet to find. It's worth searching out, but the
prices will probably scare you more than most of his
later novels. *** - an Amazon customer review