First, the necessary warning: Nameless is actually a series of six novellas, each readable in an hour or less, with each having its own title. The stories are episodes but disconnected save in having the same protagonist, the Man Without A Name (oops, someone has used that already, let’s call him ‘Nameless’ instead) who sets out in each story to bring truth and an appropriately sticky ending to a killer, swindler, abuser or similarly appalling villain. Nameless is supported by a mysterious organisation that provides him with his assignments and all the necessary information and material, from guns to accommodation, to carry out his assignments, but Nameless himself cannot remember anything about his past beyond the last two years. The series of six novellas carry hints as to his past until in the final one in this first series, Memories of Tomorrow, Nameless learns something of who he is and who he was and why he is doing what he is doing. I won’t give it away but the answer is somewhat more prosaic than the intriguing metaphysical paradox that lay at the heart of Innocent, another Koontz novel that riffed on this same idea.

By my patented Koontzometer – my reading device for locating Dean’s huge ouput on a scale that ranges from the marvellous to the dreadful – I put this Nameless series as a solid to good read: each novella pulls you in and pulls you through to the end and they make excellent bedtime reading: just long enough to keep you up past your normal bedtime but not too long to make you into a shuffling zombie the next day. However, I am not sure that I will bother with Nameless series 2 where top-drawer Koontz would have me reading the next series already. I think, when I next want some quick reads, then that will be the time.