• The Husband

  • By: Dean Koontz
  • Narrated by: Holter Graham
  • Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (1,730 ratings)

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The Husband  By  cover art

The Husband

By: Dean Koontz
Narrated by: Holter Graham
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Publisher's summary

With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakes—and the pulse rate—higher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itself—and to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever.

What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill? We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch’s wife and he’s named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn’t care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way. If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He’s got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he’ll pay a lot more. He’ll pay anything.

From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation…until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there’s no other experience quite like it.

©2006 Dean Koontz (P)2006 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The Husband moves like a roller coaster without brakes….Without a doubt, Koontz is America's No. 1 author of thrillers today … The Husband is one of his finest novels."—The Denver Post

"Dean Koontz thrillers are the perfect way to chill out on a hot summer day."—The Chicago Tribune

"Fast-paced.... Koontz often pulls the rug out from under his readers' assumptions about his characters and their motives."—Associated Press, Book Review

What listeners say about The Husband

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

The Ending Hurt!

This book was supposed to be a cliffhanger. A book with a cliffhanger can't be this contrived. The way he tied up the loose endings at the end really, really irritated me. After nine hours of listening . . . it wasn't worth it. It was a lazy ending, that smacked of Deus Ex Machina. The ending made the whole book unreasoning, unintelligent, and flat out not worth it. After building so many twists and turns that really made me wonder how in the world the main character was going to stay out of prison, the lame back yard barbecue with family, friends and friendly cops in attendance, plus a newspaper article didn't do it for me. For that, just write "The End" on the last page, and don't yank my chain.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

First Koonz Book and I liked it

This was a real good story. The character plots were good, albeit at times a tad far fetched.

The reader did a great job as well.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    out of 5 stars

Great Book!

This was a great audio book!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book!

Really a pleasure to listen to. Another terrific Dean Koontz thriller.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Koontz never writes a bad book

I have read all of Koontz's books and I have never been disappointed. Great story teller. This book was no exception, great plot!! Can't wait for the next one.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

entertaining

This book was an easy listen. It's his typical formula, but works. I enjoyed the plot twists & betrayal (which I saw coming). It was a great underdog story.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Well, I liked it

It seems people are being pretty hard on this book, or maybe I'm just easy to entertain, but I thought the book was interesting and got better as the story developed. Not the BEST book I've ever read, but a good story none the less.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Big

As in good story, "but"...I thought all the twists and spins on the familiar kidnapping story were interesting and entertaining and I especially liked the launch. I like stories that evolve from a simple premise and I am not a particular fan of Dean Koontz so maybe this is why I found things to like about this book. Not typical D.K.

As usual, though, the good parts were all taken by men, and Dean is a guy's writer, his books the male equivalent of "chic fic".

I loathed the last kidnapping scene, where the killer-to-be talks very slowly about his uninteresting involvement in a fundamentalist Christian sect in New Mexico. Every time he said "In New Mexico" I groaned and fast-forwarded my iPod. I think the kidnappee felt the same way but she didn't have the fast-forward button in her real-life situation. I was disappointed that Dean couldn't get through one whole novel without introducing at least one boringly flat, extreme, unrelatable, mono-dimensional character. I liked the take on fundamentalism though, that these "Christians" can also be murderers. Anyway, this guy took up way too much of my time and slowed the story's pace unnecessarily.

Most of the other characters were well-presented, however, and the dialogue was compelling.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

a good book

I've listened to all the other Koontz books and really enjoyed them. This was good and I squeezed in time to finish. I enjoyed watching the world through the eyes of someone changing, unlike others I enjoy the unabridged works. Definitely worth the credit but read the others! I'm still waiting to be surprised at the end like odd thomas.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great storyteller

Koontz holds my attention better than anyone out there today. A story full of twist, slides and character movement. I highly and heartily reccomend this one.

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