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    Lightning
    Lightning
    Lightning
    Audiobook10 hours

    Lightning

    Written by Ed McBain

    Narrated by Dick Hill

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The city can be a strange place, full of odd sights. Sometimes chilling sights. But nothing could prepare the detectives of the 87th Precinct for the sight of a murdered young woman, a member of a local college track team, hanging from a lamppost. Nor could they be ready for the news that the same night, another woman is raped for the third time—by the same man. Two cases, two perpetrators, one chilling evening.

    Can the detectives of the 87th, with help from Fat Ollie Weeks and Rape Squad Decoy Eileen Burke, put them behind bars for good? The team doesn’t have much time, because it only takes a moment for lightning to strike again.

    One of Ed McBain’s grittiest installments of his famed 87th Precinct series, Lightning is a masterpiece of suspense, brooding intensity, and ingenious plotting that elevates crime fiction to its highest possible plane.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 6, 2012
    ISBN9781455873838
    Lightning
    Author

    Ed McBain

    Ed McBain has been the recipient of the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. His 87th Precinct novels are international bestsellers. He lives in Connecticut.

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    Reviews for Lightning

    4/5

    1,026 ratings54 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I was not as happy with this book as I had been with some of his others. Was a struggle to get through for me.
    • 5/5
      Even better the second time and I'm glad I decided on the audible version! Dean Koontz I love your writing!
    • 3/5
      still sick.. bear with me if my grammar and such sucks today…on a recent trip to california for a wedding, jenn and i decided to spend the whole trip not talking to each other. no no no, it wasnt because of bad stuff, it was because audiobook goodness was going to make the long car drive easier.12+ hours of audio, the unabridged audiobook of Dean Koontz “Lightning”.Lightning is the story of a woman, Shane, who’s destiny is altered repeatedly by a stranger. at key points of her life a pale stranger, Stefan, arrives and aids her. his only goal is to make sure she lives. through muggings, abuse, and accidents, he assists her. what he doesnt know is that his help will bring men with machine guns her way.- Lightning details how each of these events is mysteriously associated with erratic weather patterns.- it details how destiny does not like to be led, and will attempt to revert back to its original shape.Turned out to be a pretty decent book.ultimately, the plot line is fairly easy to predict. there were points that jenn and i were both frustrated waiting hours for the obvious to occur. there even a few curve balls thrown in that misled rather well. its worth while to either listen to it or read it. Lightning was enjoyable, predictable, but enjoyable.__i have only two main complaints.1) koontz has one repeating heavy handed phrase which gets used about 400 times in the last 10 chapters. by the end, if i heard it again, i would have smashed the car window, slit my throat on the glass, then died peacefully as i bled out driving down Interstate 5.2) the audiobook reader, Christopher Lane, cant do little girls or little boy voices worth a damn. all little girl (with the exception of the main character) sounded utterly and undeniably like flamboyant gay males. the you male voices came out sounding like girls. this kind of visually tainted some scenes from the book.__side note: why is there a man on the front cover instead of Shane, the female protagonist?--xpost RawBlurb.com
    • 4/5
      This is a really juicy one, lots of stuff going on. Eileen poses as a serial rape victim hoping to catch a rapist who is--get this--raping Catholic pro-life supporters in the hopes of getting them pregnant and forcing them to have abortions to show how hypocritical they are deep down. Yikes! Eileen does indeed attract the serial rapist, who ends up cutting and raping her. As if that wasn't enough, the 87th has to deal with a murderer who's killing promising young female track stars, and one is found in Ollie Week's precinct (the 83rd in this book; later, it's the 88th). Turns out the killer was a former Olympic gold medalist track star who missed the fame and attention. In this book it seems like McBain was trying to show just how crazy people can be. He succeeded.
    • 4/5
      Quite good. I've found that Koontz can be a little hit or miss, but this one was a definite hit. Good main characters, time travel (smart time travel), history, romance and a little humor from time to time to break up the suspense ... what's not to like.
    • 4/5
      One of his better books. Can't really think of a bad one.
    • 2/5
      This review contains moderate spoilers.

      This is the first Dean Koontz I finished. Before reading a Koontz, I searched online for opinions. You know - "best Dean Koontz", "your favourite Dean Koontz". Well, this and Watchers came up a lot.

      The first 1/4th of this book is one of the best openings to a thriller I've read. It's compelling, tense, and disturbing. I almost didn't want to keep reading, but I had to.

      Then, Laura doesn't get molested, she gets out of the orphanage and it becomes an action movie with a lot of explosions.

      OK, that's not completely fair. It becomes an action AND a time travel movie. The reason I'm saying "movie" is because it would make a better movie than a book (except for that excellent beginning).

      After the beginning, I was only interested in Stefan's chapters, for the most part. The time travel stuff was pretty good. He went back and met Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler, which could have been cheesy - and it was, a little - but it worked for the most part. Laura Shane became Sarah Connor, completely uninteresting.

      If the book had been consistent, I wouldn't have been mad. Time travel with lots of gunfights and road trips? Cool! But don't start it off with something creepy that could have made it a Thomas Harris-type classic and then abandon it. It goes from gut-wrenching to breezy and it makes no sense.

      One last thing. The love interest. It is literally the worst love story with the worst dialogue I've ever read. Big, dumb guy she falls in love with. He stands outside in rain, yells: "Laura Shane, you're just too damn beautiful!"
      He also doubts himself. I'm just a big dumb guy and you're beautiful and talented.

      He died. I couldn't believe how relieved I was that I didn't have to put up with him anymore. Story didn't get a helluva lot better, but the end was fine, I guess.

      Great concept (time travelling guardian angel, destiny, that sorta good stuff), horrifyingly inconsistent and bland execution. I think I will read Fear Nothing now, and if it isn't better than this, then I don't know what to think of Koontz.
    • 4/5
      A re-read for me, though I’ve never forgotten the heart wrenching moment following the fire which I first read on a train journey when I had to put the book down. Times have changed. Knowing what was coming, I wasn’t so affected this time, and the story of publication success seems farfetched in these turbulent times of the industry, though in rare cases it happens. This is a tight supernatural science fiction thriller, and I enjoyed it as much now as I did so many years ago. What I realised during this reread is the sorrow in these pages is as important as all the other aspects to make the work enjoyable. Without conflict, there is no story, and this book has it in bucket loads.
    • 5/5
      I have this as print and audio. I loved both. Of course, I'm pretty hooked on time travel.Koontz seldom lets his reader down and for me this was no exception. Our hero is in Hitler's Germany in an alternate reality where they have developed the ability to travel through time. On one of his assignments he saves a young girl and her dad during a robbery. He continues to check on her future. Eventually he decides to "settle down" and share her timeline. Easier said than done. Great read and great listen.
    • 1/5
      Did not realize Koontz was a gun nut. The only other Koontz I read was 'Odd Thomas'. That book was a lot better. I like time-travel books, but this one was written so poorly that I was skipping large chunks of the book to get to the meat of the action. Reminds me of Stephen King in terms of the horror. He's stacked the deck in this particular case by having hit squads going after this woman. Her reaction is to get as many guns as she can and Uzi's that fire automatically. Because she needs them. Crazy people trying to kill her. So Koontz has her launch into a tirade about how wrong and bad Pacifists are. Wow. During this scene where's she teaching her son how bad Pacifists are she has just outrun a hit squad also armed with automatics. Yikers! Hit squad bad, Pacifists worse!
    • 4/5
      One of his better books. Can't really think of a bad one.
    • 3/5
      **spoiler alert** I should have known from the scifi category that this was time travel and stayed away from it. The illogical time loops and resultant paradoxes that resolve key plot points drive me nuts. At least the story had an exciting main plot with only limited reliance on time travel and interesting twists. For my taste, way too many unneeded scenes that slowed down the plot, though.For those who've read the spoilers this far, you can start the book at chapter 2 of part three without much loss. The real excitement starts there. Much of the earlier parts is recapped in more unneeded scenes, but you won't have to read them twice.
    • 4/5
      This was my first Koontz book. It was a good story line and had interesting characters, however, I just didn't connect with the story like I do with my favorite authors. It was good enough I'll probably try another book of his.
    • 5/5
      Lightning by Dean Koontz5 StarsFrom The Book:In the midst of a raging blizzard, lightning struck on the night Laura Shane was born. And a mysterious blond-haired stranger showed up just in time to save her from dying. Years later, in the wake of another storm, Laura will be saved again. For someone is watching over her. Is he the guardian angel he seems? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond all time and space?My Views:I love absolutely anything and everything that Dean Koontz writes so I was so excited when I got this as my Blind Date With A Book. I was dating an old friend as I had read this when it first came out in 2003 but 14 years can erase a lot from the old gray matter. The first and second half of the book is almost like two different stories. The book has many facets. It's a time-travel book....it's a book about the first thirty years of Laura's life....It's about Stefan, her mysterious "guardian", who rescues her when her life is in danger.... and it's a love story. Koontz's time traveler comes from a time and place you would never guess with an agenda all his own. The book provided an excellent read that is filled with lots of action, suspense, and truly fascinating and engaging characters.
    • 4/5
      I've always liked a story that plays with time, and what ifs. This story has interesting characters and shows the relationships over time. Dealing with pain, loss, and overcoming odds - the protagonist finds herself and grows stronger than she thought possible. Uplifting ending.
    • 5/5
      My favorite Koontz book and I have read almost everything he has written. I love the character development in this story so much!
    • 3/5
      I read this because my husband is a huge Koontz fan, and I'm a huge Time-Travel fan. I admit it was an exciting and interesting read, fairly intelligent. I still do *not* like thriller stuff, nightmare stuff, like child predation. I don't expect to become a Koontz fan that's for sure - however if you already are, I'm sure that this is one you'll enjoy.
    • 5/5
      Still remains one of my all time favorites.
    • 4/5
      This book tells the story of Laura Shane, born during a mysterious lightning storm, who is twice saved from being murdered during childhood by a mysterious stranger whose arrival is connected to the lightning. She grows up to become a famous writer, marries, has a child and attempts to live a normal life, but is again attacked by a killer and rescued by the stranger. She learns eventually that her rescuer is from another time, and that her survival is tied in to the fate of the world. Together with her rescuer, she fights for her life and that of her son against an enemy who can travel through time and find her no matter where she goes.

      I felt that there was a good amount of mystery in Lightning. Most of the mystery was focused on why Stefan was interfering in Laura's life and how he was able to do it. He knew things that he shouldn't know. Stefan was a mystery for the first part of the book, popping up in Laura's life to try to protect her at certain times.

      Lightning was a little different from some of Koontz' more horror-related plots but I enjoyed the science fiction elements in the book and I thought they worked very well. Lightning was first published in 1988 and, along with Watchers, remain a couple of my favorites. Lightning was a bit different, but it was a very entertaining book and I definitely enjoyed reading it again after so many years.
    • 3/5
      Fun story well told. Really, if you tell a story that involves time travel, Nazis as the bad guys, a bit of romance, and lots of shoot-em-up, it's a pretty good start. And as always, Koontz is a darned good storyteller.
    • 3/5
      I'm a bit disappointed in my first Dean Koontz novel. I know he's a very popular writer and I chose to read Lightning from all the rave reviews it got, plus I'm a fan of time travel novels. He does know how to write good action scenes, but for me, this book missed the mark. I found the set up way too long, taking up a good 40% of the book. There was a lot of details of Laura Shane's life that I found extraneous, if not outright boring. His use of humor wasn't really welcome either and it continues throughout the story. He does a good job of mystifying you with the guardian's appearances. Once the big reveal happens, you do have to suspend your belief quite a bit. Then the last part of the book is basically one long shoot-em-up chase scene. Hard to keep the level of excitement going, but Koontz does a pretty good job at this.Also, he explains the technicalities and paradoxes inherent in time travel relatively well. His characterizations are just okay for me and I found they really didn't hold my attention as I might have liked. The dialogue for the eight year old son was totally unbelievable. So this book was okay as light entertainment, easily forgettable beach reading. I might try one more Koontz book just to be sure of my opinion..
    • 2/5
      Interesting thriller about time travel. First half of book was a bit tedious, long in set-up. Second half quickened the pace.
    • 3/5
      I almost rated it 4 stars because it got really good at the end, but I disagree with many who seem to think this is his best work. The plot was very intriguing, but to me did not compare with his Odd Thomas series. The characters here, unlike with Odd Thomas, felt underdeveloped and often annoyed me.
    • 4/5
      This year, along with my King reread, I'm delving into my top 10 Koontz books again. (Probably Top 12, just so I have a book for every month, but I'm having trouble picking two more.) I have a theory about Dean Koontz, and it goes like this: He's only written ten stories in his career, and he's been rewriting them ever since. This one is structured an awful lot like From the Corner of His Eye and the absolutely terrible Life Expectancy, which is the only Koontz book I've ever given a single star to, other than his money-grabbing short story tie-ins.

      Lightning has everything I miss about Koontz. Coherent plot, a theme, no uber-smart dog character, and enough heart to choke a cannibal. It's a damn fun book, if a little... old fashioned where ideas are concerned. Let's completely overlook the concepts borrowed from the movie Terminator. Let's also overlook the fact that a man changes the future because of instalove. Let's furthermore overlook that there are two stalkers in this book: one's a secret admirer and the other is a "guardian", so that's okay. After all, what's the difference between a stalker and your boyfriend? Your boyfriend's hot.

      (These are the jokes, fuckface. Deal with 'em.)

      If we're to forgive all this, then we can safely enjoy the book. I'm willing to do that for nostalgia's sake alone. I'd hate to think that a younger version of me passed by these things without so much as a raised eyebrow, but he did. So, because I'm cutting that blind douchepickle some slack, I'll cut Koontz some slack, too.

      In summation: I wish I could travel back in time and slap myself for enjoying this book so much, but I can't Paradox!, as Chris says, over and over and over... I get it. Doctor Who is a lie, and H. G. Wells was on that rock. I can dig it. Read it for a healthy dose of 1989. Because not being confined to a wheelchair is worth risking Hitler winning the war. Logic. Set. Match.

      (This review is brought to you by Sarcasm. I received this book free of charge in exchange for puberty.)
    • 4/5
      It wasn't a time travel book until about halfway through, then it became a suspense novel with a time travel twist. The reader is always hoping for a happily-ever-after outcome and history keep getting changed. Somehow, I hope that we humans never develop a time travel capability...fun to read, nasty to imagine for real.
    • 3/5
      The biggest problem is that the story takes a long time to explain the plot. The interesting half is the first, as Laura is growing up. The other half which I selectively amnesiaed was Stefan setting up explosives in some building, and watching the "gate". But we don't know why, who he is, or what he wants, besides keeping Laura from dying. This building of tension would be fine, if we knew what the stakes were. Plus the explosives never result in any consequences to the plot. It falls flat because there's no investment (and because it doesn't work). If I was writing this, I wouldn't have included any of Stefan before the halfway point.I had no idea who he was until he says what he is. I guess Koontz kept it ambiguous for the big reveal. I also didn't remember how annoying the comedienne best friend was or the main character conveniently knowing someone rich up the ass AND an underground gun dealer working out of Chuck E. Cheese who has access to biological weapons. What I'm trying to say is that the book is more flawed then I remember.
    • 5/5
      Lightning was my first Dean Koontz book ever. I loved every minute of it! I love the way Dean Koontz describes the characters in his stories and keeps his readers guessing. I never imagined the ending in Lightning. If you haven't read it, you should. It's a definite must.
    • 3/5
      Maybe I have very high expectation when I reading the reviews on this book in many website, I was a little disappointed.The story is all about Laura Shane's Life, coming of age, time travel, NaziIf someone ask me to recommended for time travel novel I think I don't recommend this, The End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov is very very better than this.
    • 4/5
      I read this book many years ago before I really knew who Dean Koontz was. I was explaining this book to a friend of mine because I could not remember the title or the author but could remember the story to minute detail, when he told me it was a Dean Koontz book I was blown away I did not immediately relate this book to Koontzs' style of writing so much so that I had to double check - sorry to doubt you James. I loved this book as a younger woman because it had everything I was looking for in one story - time travel, murder, mystery, intrigue and someone to stick it to the Nazis.
    • 2/5
      Not one of Koontz's best works. I found myself entirely bored and disappointed that it really had nothing to do with the horror genre.