Seize the Night (novel)

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**Title** **Seize the Night**
Cover of Seize the Night
Author	Dean Koontz
Country	USA
Language	English
Series	Moonlight Bay Trilogy
Genre(s)	Suspense, Horror novel
Publisher	Bantam Publishing
Released	1998
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	480 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-553-58019-1
Preceded by	Fear Nothing
Followed by	Ride the Storm

Seize the Night is a novel written by the best-selling author Dean Koontz, released in 1998. The book is the later in a three part series of books, known as the Moonlight Bay Trilogy, involving Christopher Snow, who suffers from the rare (but real) disease called XP (xeroderma pigmentosum). The first in the series is Fear Nothing and the third is tentatively titled Ride the Storm (release date unknown).

[edit] Plot summary

The Story open on the eleventh of April while Christopher Snow, a man inflicted with a rare genetic disorder that prevents him from contact with direct sunlight, is having a midnight stride with his faithful dog and partner Orson. It seems that Jimmy Wing, a friend of Christopher and resident of Moonlight Bay, has been abducted and his mother, Lilly asks Christopher to help find her son. Although any normal citizen would usually run panicking to the police in this kind of situation, the residents of Moonlight Bay would rather take matters into their own hands rather than take the incident to the authorities since the police will just do its job of silencing the victims and keep the whole incident under wraps. Christopher, having an intimate past relationship with Lilly, sets off with his amazing dog Orson, who was at some point engendered with the intellect of a brilliant human.

Following the tracks of the phantom kidnapper, they soon find themselves inside Fort Wyvern an abandoned military base used by the government to perform black project operations unknown to many. The supposedly abandoned Fort Wyvern has been the birthplace of the many strange happenings, including the retrovirus created by Christopher's mother which is causing people to become something other than human. Also housed here is a project known only to Christopher as the Mystery Train.

In a desperate search for the kidnapper, the scent leads the two partners to the depths of the laboratory, where Christopher’s mother used to work as a lab scientist. Christopher is forced to descend into the three subterranean floors, where Orson can’t follow. Soon Christopher loses track of Orson and he is left to fend for himself in the dark labyrinth of catacombs far below Fort Wyvern. Surrounded by hundreds of deserted warehouses, with the remnants of the government experiments lurking around every corner, Christopher comes face to face with the kidnapper. After a brief tussle the strange kidnapper flees, but Jimmie is nowhere to be found.

Upon returning to the ground floor, he finds that his friend and whom he has come to think of as his brother, Orson, has also been abducted. Searching for Orson, half out of his mind with grief and ominous thoughts, Chris calls on the help of his best friend and surfing god, Bobby Halloway. While waiting for Bobby in the housing section of Fort Wyvern, Chris encounters a troop of genetically enhanced, evil Rhesus monkeys.

The next night, after apprising Sasha Goodal, Christophers long time girlfriend and late night DJ for the local radio station, it turns out young Wing is not the first child to turn up missing in the area, and Chris is starting to believe the disappearances may be the work of a serial killer. Christopher enlists the help of ex football player (now animal communicator), Roosevelt Frost, his genetically enhanced cat named Mungo Jerry, and a Harley riding, waltz dancing, fully tattooed friend named Doogie Sassman. The newly formed group set out to find the abducted, now known to be four children and one canine.

Finally back at inside Fort Wyvern the group finds a time machine, that supposedly is closed down, but that reinitiates its self and sends these folks in and out of the bowels of hell, all within the complex at Fort Wyvern. Soon they are faced with several unexplained mysterious situations and finally are faced with the abductor, who also happens to be head of the project Mystery Train. Before they can stop it, the Mystery Train “leaves the station”. Destination: Time travel. Not forwards or backwards, however, but sideways. The group is faced with a building that keeps changing realities and times. Flying gargoyles, red skies, living black trees… mutant humans and inter-dimensional beings that want to infest our world, all seemingly from Hell or worse.