Velocity

 by Bob Cheeks  

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Dean Koontz is the master of the moral dilemma and he surely stayed awake many nights conjuring up the unique plot in his new thriller, Velocity.

BUT THE HOLY GHOST, EMBLAZONED IN ICE INSTEAD OF FIRE, CONTINUED, IMPLACABLE, TO DESCEND. — From The Enduring Chill Flannery O’Connor, 1958

Dean Koontz is, I think, a Christian humanist. Or, to be more specific, a Christian casuist. Perhaps, it is his application of casuist principles in his writing that is in large measure responsible for his incredibly large fan base. This willingness or desire, on the part of Koontz, to examine the human condition predicated not only on “universally applicable moral laws governing human conduct,” and his understanding that their application cannot be administered by some simplistic set of rules or formulas to the great variations in human conduct and motivation has established a unique nexus between author and reader. Koontz has always been an outstanding storyteller brought about by his prodigious moral and creative imagination, and his expertise regarding plot, dialogue, and theme. He is one of the few writers that impales the reader on the first page, and even on the first sentence. Koontz is the master of the moral dilemma and he surely stayed awake many nights conjuring up the unique plot in his new thriller, Velocity. His protagonists are regular people, just like his readers, and Billy Wiles is no exception. Yes, he does have a past and something of a checkered past as well, but he’s placed himself in a comfortable groove, just getting by, kind of floating along in life. Does he remind you of anyone you know? Soon enough this friendly bartender is faced with the epitome of moral dilemmas presented by a demonic psychopath with an ulterior motive. It is a chilling story because Koontz refuses to let the reader discern, within the classical Judeo-Christian worldview, the “right” choice for Billy to make. You find yourself shaking your head at Billy’s actions! Employing a casuistry that would make St. Alphonsus Marie de Liguori, the author of Theologia Moralis, smile, Koontz’s Billy Wiles works through every challenge the demonic/psychopath has to offer. It is the Great Temptation, a pathway to a perverted perfection, the ultimate seduction. Koontz’s success is, in part, due to the age in which we live. Modernity is a fecund era for the novelist determined to examine the human condition, given our abandonment of a transcendent God, and our embrace of moral relativism and its associated philosophies, popular since the Enlightenment. Koontz, much like Flannery O’Connor, eschews those Manichean theologies that see “the natural world as unworthy of penetration.”1 He understands that our relationship to the transcendent God is established upon the lives we live, the world in which we live, our minds, our bodies, and our spirit. Exclude one of these elements, each of which is crucial in the Great Mystery, and you have the surreal, the inhuman, modern man. Koontz explores a higher Christology; not only the dualism of Christ as man and God, but also that man is complete only in the unification of his body and spirit. Koontz’s casuistry is, I think, that which attracts his readers. It is genuine and sincere because he very much understands and comprehends human frailty. He does not demand his pound of flesh but proffers a cushion for his protagonists, for they (and we) are bound to fall. And this, I think, is a key element in his writing. If he embraced contemporary moral relativism, we have your typical “popular” writer. If he embraced the rigidity of absolutism, we have a writer engaging in a one-size-fits-all “moral algebra.” By applying the ancient medieval principles of casuistry Koontz has been able to consistently dramatize the texture of human life juxtaposed with the themes of forgiveness, redemption, and salvation within the context of God’s creation. Dr. Thomas Fleming, in his recent book, Morality in Everyday Life, points out,

Different casuists, whether philosophers or novelists, will come to different conclusions, because ethics is not (as St. Alphonsus acknowledged) an abstract science; it is more like the art of tuning a piano or tacking a sailing ship against the wind. The rules are as affixed as the points of a compass or the overtone series, but applying them to the imperfections of human life is a messy and sometimes dangerous business.

Dean Koontz, much like G. K. Chesterton, writes of hope avoiding the notion that,

Skepticism has entered too deeply into our souls ever to be replaced by faith, and we can never forget the things which the new barbarians will never need to know.2

Endnotes 1. Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969) 2. Joseph Wood Krutch, The Modern Temper, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929), xv-xvi. Velocity is available in Amazon.com. Bob Cheeks has written for The American Enterprise, Human Events, Southern Partisan, and The Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Email Bob Cheeks

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