 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another Retro Book Review. Today we are back on that Dean Coombs bullshit with The Key to Midnight. This was originally written under the Lee Nichols name. Is it Lee or is it Lee? I never know. It's L-E-I-G-H. Let's just say Lee Nichols. But this one was originally 30,000 words longer. If you are a writer or you know manuscript format, that's usually about a hundred pages of finished material. And then he cut that much and then he went back and added another 5,000 to it. One of the things that I remember most vividly about this book is wanting it to be over. I cannot imagine that this already 416,17,18,19,420 page novel. I cannot imagine this being a 500 page novel. That is bat shit crazy to me. Another couple things that I remember very vividly about this one is jazz. I also recall that in one of my other reviews, what was it? I think for the vision something like that. I mentioned how you can listen to jazz while reading Dean Coombs and it always seems to fit. Dean Coombs himself is a jazz fan, a big band era fan. So most of his stuff has jazz in some way shape or form. But it's not as well done as in something like a Haruki Murakami type of way where he's always talking about music whether it be old classic rock or jazz or blues or whatever it might be when he does it. With Dean Coombs it's more of an air pretension. It's like, hey, I know these fancy things and now you do too. Which brings me to another thing that I mentioned in my written review which I'll link down there in the doobly-doo. King, kinks, yeah kinks. Of course kinks. Why not? Coombs. Coombs goes on and on about food in this one. There's whole sections about dishes in that are named French. It's French cuisine and he's talking about these things. I think one of them is duck in prune sauce but it's written in French. So if you don't know French you have no idea what he's talking about. And this book way back in the way back was originally published in 1975. This version it was republished in 1995. 1995 is still before Google and all that stuff or you know the majority of the internet. I remember the internet coming into, I remember, I remember the internet about 97, 98. I could be completely wrong but that's about the time I remember first having AOL and so that even if it were to republish this in 1995 imagine not knowing French. Imagine not knowing what the hell he's talking about and him going on and with this foodie nonsense and you having absolutely no idea what he's talking about because the names of these dishes are in French. He never goes back and lets you know you know what these dishes are. Now if there are popular dishes that I don't know it's still ruined the read for me as a reader. Well that's not the only thing that ruined it for me. But it's just one of those things that I didn't know so I can't enjoy that aspect of the book. This one also occurs in Japan so that one kind of threw me because Dean Coons usually writes about America not only that but he also writes about Southern California normally the Newport Beach area that's usually where his books are located. Somewhere around there anyways it's usually Southern California with the book and bill of plants and all that nonsense. This one has a blonde love interest lead character. I remember that much. It doesn't have any dogs as far as Coons checklist is concerned. It has the typical psycho killer that is also handsome. It ticks off some other things as far as the Coons checklist is concerned. If you want to read my review I will link down there in the doobly-doo. Other than that I can't remember a damn thing about this book. The Lee Nichols name I remember really really enjoying when I was younger like Shadowfires, this one, The Key to the Midnight. I even remember vaguely vaguely liking The House of Thunder but I'm reading that one right now with Dee Lee and that one spoiler alert probably the worst Dean Coons book I've ever read. I can't believe that I was just telling her tonight I can't believe that the same person that wrote that book wrote Phantoms or Watchers or Lightning or The Bad Place or Darkfall or any number of his good books. But with The Key to the Midnight is another one of those that I don't remember anything about the actual plot. I know it happened to Japan. I know there's a lot of fluff. There's a lot of buildup and the Lee Nichols name seems like the type of a pin name where he tried to be a little more literary. He tried not to just have the punchy dialogue, the punchy narrative. He tried to be a little deeper than normal and it didn't really work too well because he's not that kind of writer. I don't think he does that very well. Whereas you know like a Stephen King can go off on a tangent about someone's family history or whatever and he makes it entertaining. With Dean Coons it just always feels like he's going through the motions. Like he's just trying to fill in a word count which is funny because he cut 30,000 words and then added another 5,000 words back to it. This era of Dean Coons is odd also because it's around the time that he started pumping out the rewrites. So you had all of his normal stuff coming out in hard cover. You had phantoms. You had midnight. You had all these things coming out on its own and then you had these odd paperback books also. You had The Mask which was in the Owen West book. You had let's see here the Fun House which oddly it was paperback only. Oddly enough about the Fun House is we'll talk about this more when we get there. That was actually a movie that he wrote. I think he wrote the screenplay for Under Another Name but I'll talk about that when we get to that review. The last time I tried to read The Fun House it was a DNF. It did not finish. And I don't know if me and Dealey are going to get back to it again this time or not or if we're just going to call it quits. Next up on our, well we're reading The House of Thunder right now but next up after that one is one of my all-time favorite Dean Coons books and that's phantoms. So you're getting at least one more negative review from me unless somehow there at the end the House of Thunder turns into an epic read which I highly highly doubt but I've been surprised before. So you're getting one more negative review before hopefully we get into the fun stuff again. But have you read The Key to Midnight if you have or you just want to talk trash or talk good stuff about Dean Coons down there in the comments below? Please do. But until next time, I have been Ian. You have been Ian. This has been another Dean Coons review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!