The Crooked Staircase is a dark and gritty short that will have readers hoping that Jane is able to find peace.
Dean Koontz takes ever mothers fear bringing them to life on pages that readers will not be able to stop reading.
The story covers some of the darkest parts of the human mind with rape, torture, and sex slavery.
Jane is a one woman killing machine taking care of the scum that destroyed her life. There are several times the author loses readers with his endless knowledge of the weapons everyone is using pulling reading out of the story and flipping pages to find the action and story line once again.
The Crooked Staircase will have readers a little lost with the two different story lines as they move deeper into the angry dark story. The story also end very abrupt with a cliffhangers that will either have readers dying for more or anrgy because the story feels unfinished.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of Dean Kootnz The Crooked Staircase
May 8th 2018 by Bantam

Jane Hawk is a former FBI agent who is now wabnted for treason, murder and espionage. She is working on clearing her Marine husband’s good name. Her husband committed suicide due to mind control by the use of nanotechnology. Jane has been working on exposing the people who are creating, and injecting brain-washing nanotechnology implants into people who have been declared dangerous for the future of the country. They can cause the person to commit murder and suicide. Jane has her 5 year old son in hiding with friends. Will her son be safe with them? Jane has finally gotten Booth Hendrickson who is part of the Justice Department. She finds out about Booth’s young life after she injects him with a nanotech implant. He takes her where she can get information/evidence of what is being done to people.

There is much more to the novel but it’s all to easy for me to spoil the story for you. I was totally engrossed in this novel. There is action that doesn’t stop. It is well written and includes suspense that had me holding my breath! I want the next book now as I want to know what happens next! I thoroughly enjoyed the book!

Though I liked the premise described in the blurb, in practice The Crooked Staircase fell flat for me. Jane Hawk was a strong and likeable protagonist and I found the underlying story interesting, but I had to force myself to keep reading on more than one occasion. There was too much back and forth as chapters jumped from character to character and too much description of and focus on unimportant elements, so that important pieces felt glossed over and big reveals were hardly shocking. The Crooked Staircase feels way too long, and after all that, it ends in the middle of the story, utterly unresolved.

I guess it's a cliffhanger? But it feels more like it just... stops. There's no single major question waiting to be answered, just the completely unresolved underlying story. I flipped the page expecting more of an ending and was annoyed to find an ad for the next book. I wrongly expected each story within the Jane Hawk series to be a complete mystery/thriller in and of itself, or to at least offer some semblance of resolution.

If I'd enjoyed the read, I'd continue the series, but learning the resolution (after who knows how many more installments) isn't worth the effort. If I'd borrowed this book from the library instead of reading a review copy, I very likely might've given up halfway through.

That said, if you're a fan of slow-and-descriptive thrillers and okay waiting a while for a resolution, this series might up your alley.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Book three of the Jane Hawk series and this is my favorite of the three so far! I’d considered walking away from the series after the last book The Whispering Room and now I’m so glad I stayed with it.

Jane, America’s most wanted fugitive OR America’s new-age hero. Jane is relentless in her pursuit to find those responsible for the nanotechnology with the potential to enslave the world to those in power. One of the first casualties…her own husband, and she’s swore vengeance to hunt down those in charge.

To truly get the most out of this series you really should start with book one The Silent Corner. It provides Jane’s background as well as the uprising of the powerful Arcadians, who will stop at nothing to take over the world for their own perverse pleasures.

It’s a long book (over 500 pages) but with very short chapters you move along quickly. I was drawn in right away and was on the edge of my seat all the way through. Dean Koontz took this series to the next level and I’m already looking forward to the next release!


Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and Dean Koontz for an ARC to read in exchange for an honest review

Former FBI agent Jane Hawk has gone rogue, fighting the mind-control conspiracy that caused the death of her husband and countless others. She has become very skilled at hiding in plain sight as she continues to fight the powerful people behind the plot. She's being hunted, not only by the FBI but by the devious powers-that-be who are behind the increase in murders and suicides. Jane has a very powerful man in her sights....and she is determined to get him. But the closer she gets, the more she learns that the truth is more horrific than she could have ever imagined.

I love this series! There is plenty of action and Jane Hawk kicks ass as a main character. She is intelligent, scrappy and determined. The Crooked Staircase is the 3rd book in the Jane Hawk series. The facts behind the conspiracy have been revealed slowly as this series progresses. They really messed with the wrong person when they caused Jane's husband to die. She's not going to stop until she gets her revenge and stops their plans.

This series has a bit of a different vibe from other Dean Koontz books I've read in the past. I like his horror novels, but he definitely writes a great action/thriller too! I am definitely going to keep reading each book in this series. The next book, The Forbidden Door, comes out in October 2018, followed by #5, The Night Window in 2019.

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Random House/Ballentine via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

For readers who like their protagonists practical, resilient and relentless in the face of daunting obstacles, the Jane Hawk series by Dean Koontz should be highly satisfying. In this third installment the tension is almost unbearable, and certainly not conducive to falling quickly afterwards into peaceful slumber.

Jane is a former FBI agent and a mother who stands all-but-alone against the entire military-industrial complex of the 21st century. A confederacy of powerful, corrupt people have infiltrated all levels of government and corporate America in a mind-control experiment run amok.

Other reviewers have talked about how dark and hopeless these stories are. I agree they are dark and very, very frightening. But the narrative also features clear-headed Jane Hawk, who trusts her instincts and resists the ubiquitous propaganda, and the few other independent thinkers with long-time loyalties or instant recognition of a kindred soul. These are enough to introduce hope into the mix.

I've liked the seamless structure of this trilogy -- the second novel picks up immediately at the point where the first ended, and the third right on the heels of the second. I'm grateful for this pattern, considering the cliffhanger ending of The Crooked Staircase.

Dark, dark, dark! This is book three of the series and what has gone on before is likely covered in detail in the previous two books (which, I regret, I haven't read), but enough background is presented that one becomes au currant with the story quite rapidly and never feels lost. We are treated to "1984" updated to the modern cyber age, with scary possibilities, and probabilities of nightmare proportion. A modern zombie apocalypse? And to think folks were once frightened of fluoride! What redeems this Stygian gloom is the heroine herself. Jane, despite all the horrors in her life, has relentlessly pursued the light whether in the beauty of music or the night sky or in love of mankind, despite the evil surrounding her and against which she fights.

The action is well-paced and horrors are offset by moments of peace; the writing is riveting and sound; and the story is on the edge; fully deserving of the title "thriller."

I have been hooked on this series from the first book, The Silent Corner. I found this book, The Crooked Staircase, to be the best one yet. This story is just so Fast-paced and had me on the edge of my seat from the very first page. I was so disappointed when I got to the end because it ends on such a cliffhanger! I look forward to the next book in this series!

"Machines of flesh"

This is the third book in the Jane Hawk series, after THE SILENT CORNER and THE WHISPERING ROOM. And you should definitely read the first two books before this one to fully enjoy the reading experience.

I enjoyed this story in Jane Hawk's further brushes with death but I did feel it was a bit verbose. I felt author Koontz was padding parts of this book so there could be a fourth book, which there is - THE FORBIDDEN DOOR.

But this book is still definitely worth reading. Lots of action, continuing questions about the deadly conspiracy, further expanding on Jane's character plus new characters added - good guys and bad guys.

As I wrote in another review of this series, it seems that author Koontz has got his writing mojo back, giving us readers a new and vibrant character and series. I just hope he finds a good stopping point and doesn't ruin good books by having the series drag on for too long.

I highly recommend this book and the first two in the Jane Hawk series.

I received this book from Random House through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Published by Bantam on May 8, 2018

The Crooked Staircase is the third novel in a series that pits former FBI agent Jane Hawk against the conspirators who not only caused her husband to commit suicide, but have developed mind-control nanotechnology that lets them kill as many people as they want, which turns out to be a large number. Their goal is to shape the country in their own image by doing away with people whose more tolerant opinions might become influential. This installment, like the first two, has Hawk chasing the bad guys while they are chasing her.

One of the weaknesses in the first two novels involved the bad guys’ failure to go after Jane’s obvious vulnerability, the son she hid with friends. Given the bad guys’ all-encompassing knowledge of everything, thanks to their control of the NSA and every other federal agency’s spy network, it didn’t seem to me it would be all that hard to find her son. Dean Koontz addresses that problem in this novel.

He also throws in a bunch of collateral characters, the most interesting of whom are two young writers from India who are viewed as a threat by the bad guys (or their threat-tabulating computer) because they are writing humanist literature that might catch on and persuade people treat each other decently, thus impeding the bad guys’ cutthroat notion of a utopian society. A less interesting character, who might play a bigger role in the next novel, is a stereotypical genius whose autism makes him social-phobic.

The biggest problem with this series (assuming that readers are willing to suspend disbelief of its unconvincing premise) is that Koontz has many more than the story really needs. The words are well chosen — there is no question that Koontz is capable of crafting exquisite sentences, and reading his books is always a linguistic pleasure — but this is the kind of novel that depends on pace, and the pace slackens too much for my taste as, for example, we are lectured about the influence of the Greek Furies upon one of the writers. Koontz also tends to use Hawk and other characters to engage in philosophical discussions about the human condition, usually by lamenting the direction in which humanity is headed. That works well in a different kind of novel (it worked very well in Koontz’s The City), but it doesn’t work in a conspiracy thriller that depends on action and pace to sustain the story. I can’t say that wordiness is a big distraction, but there are too many eloquent philosophical passages in the novel that seem to have been included for the sake of showcasing eloquence or philosophy rather than advancing the plot.

And the plot really does need advancing. My understanding is that Koontz intends to tell this story over at least five books. A standard conspiracy thriller doesn’t merit five books. I don’t know what more is to come, but my suspicion is that the story could easily be compacted into a trilogy. Parts of this novel seems like filler, with extended chase scenes and some collateral stories involving characters who are introduced and thrown away. Some of that content could have been excised with no loss of value.

I give Koontz credit for not contriving a happy ending for every character. And I give him credit for working in several peaks of suspense as the story moves along. Koontz occasionally indulges in a bit of pop psychology of the sort that appeals to thriller writers — a sociopath is trying to punish his mother by serially punishing and killing women who look like his mother — and that I expect to encounter in bad novels about profilers. The evil mother who shaped the key villain in this volume is completely over the top. Other characters are more credible, but again, none of the characters match Koontz’ best work.

The ending isn’t exactly a cliffhanger, but it’s close, as one would expect of each novel in a five novel series. I’ll keep reading because Koontz is a gifted wordsmith and the story isn’t dull. So far, however, the story isn’t particularly original or thrilling, and I fear it’s losing steam.

RECOMMENDED

Well, the ending certainly surprised me. My kindle fooled me! The Crooked Staircase is the 3rd installment in the Jane Hawk series. You definitely need to read the prior 2 books before reading this one. Koontz does a great job giving a brief background but it would be best to start from the beginning of Jane Hawk's journey against the Techno Arcadians.

Like the others, this book is intense. There is a lot of action and suspense. It kept me on the edge-of-my-seat throughout the book. Jane Hawk is indomitable. Love her character.

I definitely recommend this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a copy of Dean Koontz's "The Crooked Staircase" in exchange of an honest review.

This new book by Dean Koontz is riveting and gripping, a great novel with an unexpected ending. It is fast moving with a lot of twists and turns and nail biting scenes. Can't wait to read the next one. I do recommend this book to all who enjoy a good thriller.

This is the third novel in the fast paced Jane Hawk thriller series. Dean Koontz really makes Jane`s character shine in this 3rd book. Every page will having you wanting more. After a bit of a let down at the end of the second book, The whispering room, Koontz brings back the the characteristics of Jane that made you root for her in the first book. This is a must read.

I received this book through Netgalley and the book’s publisher, Bantam Books, and I’m sure glad I did. I couldn’t put the book down!

This is the second Jane Hawk book that I have read. “Crooked Staircase” grabs you from the start and keeps your interest to the end. The book is filled with suspense and has multiple threads going. I can see this made into a movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading future Jane Hawk books! I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys suspense, thriller books. If you haven’t read Jane Hawk, definitely give it a try!

This third installment in the Jane Hawk series keeps the action amped up as Jane continues to hunt down members of the secret organization that is slowly overtaking the world with its control mechanism that turns even the most willful individuals into slaves. All it takes is a round of three injections and your mind is no longer yours.

These books are frightening because they are realistic. It does not seem that far fetched to imagine a world where corrupt people with a little power have developed a way to control the population. This adds an eerie quality to the story, particularly when you end up in the head of one of these "adjusted" people and are privy to their reactions.

There were a lot of heartbreaking moments within this installment. At this point, it's amazing that Jane can keep going. And the woman is only twenty-seven years old. Her well of hope seems to have an endless spring, and she is going to need it.

One thing that I appreciate is that Koontz has written a strong woman, who is extremely capable, but doesn't make it so that she can take on fully grown men with ease. He shows her struggle to fight against men and women alike and it's often her training that gets her out of situations, which is always a good thing. She is not superhuman, but she is well trained and is fighting for the good of the world and her family.

My main criticism of this series is that it seems never ending. There are already at least two more books announced and I don't see how the story can be wrapped up satisfactorily. If anyone can do it, Koontz can, but I'm eager to see the end of this journey. They are emotional rides and the end of this one has me sweating.

I've read quite a few novels by Dean Koontz but The Crooked Staircase is the first book from the Jane Hawk series. Although I missed out on quite a bit of character background, I feel like I got to know Jane Hawk quite well. She is intense and angry for all the right reasons. In the book previous to this one, her husband committed suicide, but Jane knows he didn't choose to do it and now she is going after the people who took him from her.
This book is quite dark and exposes the reader to extreme forms of violence and abuse (definitely not the book for all readers). The ending was shocking as well in that I wasn't expecting the skid marks left at the edge of the cliff! Koontz leaves you hanging in a way that makes you question if that is really the end of the book. I actually had to reread a little to make sure my kindle didn't skip past a page or two!
I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series and hope to read the first two very soon.
4.5/5 stars

Even though I found the overall premise of this series quite compelling, I really struggled to get through this particular book, mainly because I just didn’t feel invested in any of the characters, not even Jane. I also felt that the pacing was slow and that it took forever for anything of substance to really happen. A few other elements of the book just made me feel like this just wasn't the book for me, including the focus on details that I found uninteresting, such as the specific model of gun each character was carrying and the specific brand of pepper spray, etc. I was also not a fan of the language used to describe the female characters in the book- b*tch, skank, sugar, honey, an okay piece of tail, etc. I understand that these were the personalities of the low-life bad guys coming through but it still made for a cringe-worthy reading experience for me. For all of these reasons, I unfortunately just don’t see myself continuing the series.

I am loving this Jane Hawk series. She is one bad a$$ woman. And smart? Wowza! Along the way she gives explanations as to her thought process and how she determines her next step. While ruthless in many ways, she does have a conscience and it is definitely tested numerous times during this book.

The suspenseful action in this book was intense (just like the other ones, but maybe a little more for this one). It kept leading me to say to myself "no, not him"; "no not her"; "no not them" etc many, many times. I could seriously feel the enemy crowding in and my pulse was racing.

This Techno Acadian stuff is super scary! I hope it stays just fiction.

However, it left off at an extremely high point that had me holding my breath while I read "to be continued" (shocked face!!) Why??? Although since then I have read a review that explained that if I read that excerpt, I will have one question answered.

But now, we have to wait. Mr. Koontz you better be writing fast is all I got to say! Ha!

Excellent series, excellent read.

Thanks to Random House Ballantine and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Great book. Really enjoyed it. I had to keep reading it to find out what was going to happen to the little boy. Can't wait for the next book when the story continues.

Let me first say that I liked this novel. The problem was that I thought that this would be the last book in the series. The book is very well written and on its own rates a four star review. I just don't think I'll be on board for the rest of this series, I'm so Jane Hwked out for a while.