I figured that out about Stephen King by the mid 1980s.
I read deeply odd and was a little disappointed with the idea of a rhinestone cowboy satanic serial killer and then the Driving Miss Daisy moment when the elderly woman picks odd up in her stretch limo who also of course is more than she seems, has connections that allowed we her the latest Government tech and help odd save the day, I found this on another site and thought it expressed a few points well.
Person1: Guess which Dean Koontz book I am thinking of.
Person2: Give me a clue.
Person1: It has a heroic dog in it.
Person2: That narrows it down to about thirty books.
Person1: Okay, this one has a strong, beautiful, determined female with a gentle, more sensitive male counterpart.
Person2: Forty books.
Person1: This one has an evil, corrupt, sadistic, deviant atheist as the villain, who has a god complex, likes raping people, and has a weird hobby for no reason whatsoever.
Person2: Fifty books.
Person1: Alright, now I’m thinking of one where the hero is a humble, loving, heroic, caring, clean-living christian with high moral standards and a dislike of evolution science and anything psychologically explaining the abstract concept of ‘evil’.
Person2: Forty books.
Person1: This one has a too-neat ending where the evil side is totally destroyed and the good guys all live happily ever after with faith and love in some american-apple-pie family situation.
Person2: Fifty books.
Person1: The christian overtones are so heavy that it feels like he is beating me around the head with his bible and shouting in my ear.
Person2: Seventy books.
Person1: It’s really really good.
Person2: (looks blank)
I think I was in my 30s when this thread was begun.
An observation: I find it ironic that, once this zombie thread was resurrected, about half of the posts chided its re-awakening while offering absolutely nothing to the thread topic. The other half provided (still) relevant information without the zombie jokes.
So basically, those who complained/poked fun at/smirked at the re-birth of a zombie thread with no other input perpetuated what they are complaining about/poking fun at/smirking at.
And I acknowledge that I, too, am adding little of substance.
mmm
So we have
[ul]
[li]Posts remarking on this being a zombie thread[/li][li]Posts of substance[/li][li]Mean Mr. Mustard’s post referring to both of those types.[/li][li]This post referring to the other three types as well as itself.[/li][/ul]
Affleck was the BOMB in Phantoms, yo.
I like his old “pure” science fiction, and the Odd books, although they are beginning to strain my willing suspension of disbelief.
The dude is 70 with hair transplants. 
Watchers was the best of them.
It was one of the few books where you can understand and even sympathize a little with the villain.
When the creature was cornered and knew it was about to be killed, and it held the Mickey Mouse doll and remembered back to the one time in it’s life where it felt happy, before the time when it knew that everyone regarded it as a hideous monster…heartbreaking. 
Thirteen years it took to get to this joke? Everyone else, I’m very, very disappointed in all of you.
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, have a biscuit. Good poster!
I’ve enjoyed a number of DRK’s books, but whoa, when he snaps into formulaic author mode, the man commits to it. I liked Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas, but didn’t like the second Odd Thomas book as much (Brother Odd, I think it was?) and Odd Hours was just over the top and I haven’t even looked to see if a new novel in the series is out. The Taking was just awful.
I was in my 40s, which is scarier than anything Koontz wrote.
There is a reality TV show in China where they take famous artists and have them compete in doing something they aren’t very good at. A violinist might have to recite poetry, or a visual artist play the flute. It took me forever to figure out what I was watching.
I started another thread recently but I might as well move it here:
Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series (spoilers)
I’ve read the five novels of the series and I came away disappointed. I liked the initial premise a lot, and depicting Frankenstein as a modern-day evil sorcerer was spot on; but the promise of the series felt more or less wasted. The plot lines seem oddly disjointed, as if Koontz had planned some things originally but let them drop. In fact, the long delay between novels 2 and 3 suggests he lost interest in it at one point, and scrambled to simply get something down on paper.
The things that didn’t ring right with me are:
[SPOILER]How Deucalion has very little role in the stories beyond the beginning. The obvious role for him would have been to be the agent of God’s wrath against Frankenstein. Instead, Frankenstein is undone simply by the decay of his control over his creations, while Deucalion more or less just stands around and watches. A much better plot would have been for Deucalion to be the vector of that decay, bearing the divine spark that makes them independent people rather than soulless machines. I also thought giving him woo teleportation powers was stupid- he could have been an effective protagonist without them.
The aborted story line about the serial killer who’s collecting body parts to create a perfect mate. That begged to somehow be incorporated into Frankenstein’s plans, but nope he just gets killed.
The police detectives were underutilized. They should have been more crucial to the quest to stop Frankenstein, and faced a lot more hazard.
I don’t know what was up with the autism plotline, but it apparently didn’t go anywhere
Finally, Jocko was an interesting idea but needed to be worked into the plot in a more useful manner.[/spoiler]
In short, a lot of squandered potential.
I think the Frankenstein series was derailed by Hurricane Katrina. He had to wait a while before finishing it due to the disaster and I think he just lost track of the plot threads in the intervening years.
I know you’re not a numbers person, but you may want to recheck that.
I first read this thread yesterday, and since I was stopping at the library on the way home anyway, I figured I would try a Dean Koontz book. I had never read his stuff. I ended up checking out “Innocence.” I am only 26 pages in, but it definitely has my interest. I was surprised to learn that it was only just copyrighted in 2014. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has already read this and perhaps compare to his books that people are calling formulaic.
Way back in the later '70’s and early '80’s Dean Koontz was one of the many authors whose books were circulated and discussed by my friends and my then teenage daughter’s friends.
One time discussing the unmistakable ‘Well, that’s a classic Koontz plot point/character/prose style’ I mentioned one novel and my child insisted it was by someone else. I confidently continued to believe it was a Koontz. Cutting to the chase, she borrowed a copy and DAMN. It was by Leigh Nichols. I had to concede.
OK, ten years or so later I am vindicated! It was him writing under another name. The point is that the guy’s style is really unmistakable.
I believe he really blossomed under a tight editor, then re-bloated. Liked him back in the day, but gave up on him years ago.
I agree with most of this thread’s analysis of what is good from his oeuvre and what is not. Frankenstein really disappointed me, too, Lumpy, for the same reasons. Well put.