Jim Ironheart, a man of mystery, and Holly Thorne, a reporter from Portland, hook up in southern California to unlock the secret of Jim's incredible ability to predict dire circumstances under which someone is destined to die.... and in foreseeing it, he steps in and is able to thwart the machinations of fate.

I've only read a few other Koontz books, but this one I really enjoyed because I couldn't see where the plot was going. I love being surprised by a book and this one just kept throwing plot twists throughout. It was suspenseful and original and I couldn't predict it, which in my mind, makes a great read. ( )

Not all Dean Koontz books are the same. This is worse than the others, and is no fun to read. ( )

This is surely worth the read, but it is not going to impress anyone as one of Dean's best work. It deals with telekenesis and is imminently forgettable after a few days. ( )

I don't want to talk too much about the plot of this book. It has many twists and turns that are best experienced. It starts out with a man who is drawn to a specific place and time just in time to save a boys life from a drunk driver. A reporter who happens to be there tries to get the story from him can only get a name. He wants his privacy and doesn't want to be made into a hero. The reporter doesn't think too much about it until a few days later she reads of another child on the other side of the country being saved by a mysterious stranger who would only give his name before disappearing into the crowd. A quick search reveals this man has been doing this a lot, all over the nation. The rest of the book is something you should read for yourself.

Mr. Koontz's style is very polished and very easy to read. He doesn't let the writing stand in the way of the story and it slides easily along, always forcing you to turn the next page. I read this book in a few hours. It was wonderful. And, it taught me something about myself, which is his goal, as stated in an interview he did on ABCNews.com and for that I am appreciative. It is always good to learn something about oneself. ( )

Review by Jeremy Taylor

Dean Koontz is without question one of the modern world’s most prolific fiction writers, and few outside the world of professional literary criticism would question his credentials as an entertainer. His books contain stories that sometimes horrify and often inspire; his characters prompt readers to examine their own lives and motivations; his plots keep his fans turning pages late into the night.

In recent years, Koontz has drifted away from the pure thriller, striking a more introspectively humorous tone. The Odd Thomas series, for example, along with standalone novels like Life Expectancy and The Husband, present philosophical explorations of things like relationships and fate. Cold Fire is not such a book. Though it certainly contains philosophical and even theological elements, it is first and foremost a thriller.

Jim Ironheart is grocery shopping when he feels a sudden, inexplicable—though not unfamiliar—call. “Life line,” he says to a woman standing next to him, and then his life changes.

Jim, for reasons he can’t begin to understand and by means he can’t even dream of, has become something of a superhero, feeling drawn to seemingly random places at seemingly random times, arriving often with only seconds to spare before he finds himself in a position to save a life. He attributes this strange ability to the call of God in his life, and though he doesn’t understand it and doesn’t even always appreciate it, he accepts it.

Holly Thorne is a reporter who witnesses one of Jim’s acts of unwitting heroism. Intrigued by his uncanny ability to always be in the right place at exactly the right time, she opens an investigation into his history. What she finds draws her and Jim together as they uncover secrets long buried and face a danger more sinister than anything either of them could have imagined.

The book’s action is nonstop from virtually the first page, as readers are drawn into Jim’s unique life and Holly’s determined quest. As the story progresses, Koontz takes very little time out for deep questions, but several interesting issues come up in dialog between Jim and Holly. The most compelling of these has to do with the nature and identity of God, whom Jim credits with having called him to his extraordinary life.

The book—the first two-thirds of it, anyway—is therefore profoundly religious, though not in the typical Protestant, Evangelical sense. God is undeniably present, but his nature is not always kind. The basic religious worldview of the characters can be summed up in this excerpt: “Adam disobeyed and ate the apple, gobbled up the fruit of knowledge, so God decided to let him know all sorts of things, both light and dark. Adam’s children learned to hunt, to farm, to thwart the winter and cook their food with fire, make tools, build shelters. And God . . . let them learn, oh, maybe a million ways to suffer and die. He encouraged them to learn language, reading and writing, biology, chemistry, physics, the secrets of the genetic code. And He taught them the exquisite horrors of brain tumors, muscular dystrophy, bubonic plague, cancer run amok in their bodies—and not least of all airplane crashes.”
Later, a character says, “I’ve met up with some people who’re such walking scum, it’d be an insult to animals to call them animals. If I thought God always dealt mercifully with their kind, I wouldn’t want anything to do with God.”

The story is certainly exciting—breathtakingly so at times. One of the highlights (though not the ultimate climax) is a plane-crash scene that typifies Koontz’s bare-knuckle writing style that puts the reader right in the middle of the kind of chair-grabbing suspense largely missing from his more recent works.

Cold Fire contains little foul language, though there are a few fairly tame sex scene and several passages containing violence. Some readers may object to Koontz’s depiction of God as a largely unknowable mystery, but for those who appreciate the idea that God works in mysterious ways and enjoy the fact that things aren’t always what they seem, this is Dean Koontz at his best. ( )