Koko is a lenghty tome. My paperback copy spans 640 pages and promises great things - a haunting nightmare of four Vietnam veterans, reunited 15 years after the war, thrust back into the horrors of the war when they learn about a chain of murders comitted in Southeast Asia - the murderer always leaves a playing card with the word "Koko" scribbled on it. The word has eerie connotations for the four men - they believe that a former member of their platoon is behind the murders.After Floating Drago...

Found this novel staring at me from the shelf of a used book store about a year ago. I picked it up, saw it was a first edition, and decided I had nothing to lose at the discounted price of $2.50. As I walked it to the counter, a single playing card fell out of the middle of the book, where, I assume, someone had marked a page. Only later did I come to discover how disturbing an omen this was.My only exposure to Peter Straub (excellent Slate interview here) before this book was through his colla...

Koko is absolutely brilliant! This book reads like a recollected nightmare and the twists and turns will leave you dizzy.

the atmosphere of degradation, regret, self-loathing, and impending doom was pervasive and absorbing. the author shows a sure hand with characterization and a steady one with narrative. the identity of the killer was unsurprising but well-conceived. and either as an extended metaphor for What We Did Wrong in Vietnam or as an ominous tract on the depths that some men can sink in their hunger for self-destruction, Koko certainly succeeds.

If you’ve thought about reading Koko, then Be Like Mike and Just Do It. Stephen King fans may appreciate this book, and know about the connection with his friend, Peter Straub. These two guys are like bookends in the horror genre. At times, they even have a similar way of writing. But Koko is its own thing. It’s not like Straub’s earlier book Ghost Story (saw the movie – have yet to read the book). To me, that was horror. Koko has horrific acts – psychopathic killer, atrocities committed in war....

This started out so strong but then kind of meandered until it peetered out in the end (see what I did there? *wiggles eyebrows*). A couple of Vietnam vets are meeting up for a memorial - and to discuss some murders that have been making the news. Because they think they know who the killer is: a former member of their unit. However, while they were serving in Vietnam, something happened. Something dark that they can't talk about and that makes them not go to the cops but go in search of the mys...

I'm only reviewing this so that, if I ever mistakenly pick this up again in the future, I will have a warning in place to steer me to something else instead.I first read this as a stupid teenager and enjoyed it. The book starts off great but then meanders into an antiquated jumble of overwrought writing and cringe-worthy narration.In the narration, which is omnicient at times, and not in dialogue or a character's thoughts:"His yellow smile" to describe an Asian person's smile. I'm sure some will...

This will likely be a long review, so I apologize in advance-there is so much to touch on here though, and I will keep it spoiler free as this really is something to be experienced, and experienced as cold as possible. There’s so much to be said about Peter Straub-his writing style, his characters, his thematic approach and most importantly, the psychology of his books, both of and in; (plot is often nearly irrelevant) but trying to arrange them into something with any coherence, by someone with...

It has been at least a decade since I last tried to read this book, which I had attempted before on two previous occasions. And I knew how far I had gotten each time, if not by some whiff of remembering; then at least by the markers I had placed where I had stopped each time. It was the pure principal of the thing that fuelled my surpassing both those afore laid markers, not the prose or the characters or the story. If memory serves me correctly I bought this book based solely on my experience o...

"Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyesThey send you down to warAnd when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?"They only answer, "More, more, more"Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival Thanks again to Corey Woodcock for another stellar recommendation with Peter Straub's Koko.  My second foray into this authors collection and I continue to be blown away by the quality of his writing.  So I've let the cat out the bag there by letting you know early that this is going to be a positi

This book is a chaotic story about the post Vietnam syndrome that has plagued so many of those who fought there. It does show that prolonged exposure of you men to situations of extreme violence and stress due to the constant promise of violence, does alter anybody his psyche.I once spoke with somebody who served a year in Afghanistan under constant pressure and he admitted that he had a hard time conforming to the "normal"situations after returning to his home. He did recognize his own paranoia...

Finally finished it :) Buddy Read with the awesome The Eclectic Club It was fun ride but it had some bumps along the way :)

Tricksy ReviewWhere to start? An uneasy read, this. There is real madness to be found here. A brooding, heady insanity. Koko, the novel, is a disjointed, psychological, somewhat confusing affair. Why then is it such a good read? Well, because that is also the best way to describe half the characters in this piece of work. There is certainly method to the madness here. And Koko himself? He's certainly a disturbed man… and it rubs off. This book is not a quick read, it's everything but, and when I...

A frustratingly complex examination of the nature of evil that is hampered by the author's peculiar style.Koko is a lot of things all at once. It is a serial killer thriller that dwells on the damaging effects of the Vietnam War on the men that fought it. It is an examination of the roots of violence, where it comes from and how it affects different kinds of persons. It is also, as Laird Barron puts it, an “astonishing account of a descent into lunacy and depravity” (“Koko: Stalking Through the

This is the epitome of mystery/thriller writing, penned by a master of literary fiction at the height of his powers.Four men, bonded by the horrors of war, reunite to hunt one of their own, when a series of brutal killings a world away leads them back into their shared pasts, to face the specter that haunts them all.....KOKO.A dense, complex book that showcases all of Straub's impressive skills as a wordsmith, disassembling and recreating the world around the reader, word by word, sentence by se...

When Straub is on his game there are few writers that can pen a story like he can. Koko, while meandering in several places with a few dead-end story lines, still manages to be a skillfully written and engaging thriller. The boys are getting back together to go after one of their own who has slid off the rails and gone on a killing spree. They need to find him and get him some help. Well…cash in on the story of how they caught him is more like it. Either way, he is one of their own and they need...

As is the case when I finish other Peter Straub novels, I closed Koko last night, speechless, aware that I had been, at least on a tiny level, transformed. As per usual with Straub, this book is an experience: light beach reading it is not. Straub deals in and with psychology, tethering it to literary elements; like human psychology, his narratives and characters are puzzles that are not so easy to complete. It is best for one to take his or her time when reading Straub, and to not get overwhelm...

This has got to be one of the best thrillers I've ever read. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, especially if you happen to know that I don't read a lot of thrillers, but I don't mean it to be. I'm even tempted to call it the Moby-Dick of thrillers; it's long after all, tempestuous, a little dreamlike, it sometimes meanders, and it's about four men in the same boat (even if not a literal one), chasing a dangerous and elusive figure from the past who may be a symbol of something, or j...

No one could say that Peter Straub can't write a beautiful sentence or that his description of people and places isn't excellent. I love his usage of language. This is 562 pages long. But, what I have found with horror writers, they seem to have a need to prove that they are better writers, which is ridiculous, and begin to picture themselves as great literary figures. And that is what I feel happened in this book. After forty pages, I had no idea who the main character really is; I have bits an...

I may put this on my horror bookshelf, but in point of fact, it's a straight thriller in the mid-eighties extra page-count kind of way that lets us delve deep into the tortured psyches of a band of men, Vietnam vets, who get embroiled in the machinations of a serial killer -- or indeed, one of their own.Straub has a great grasp on characterizations and the meandering plot has a lot in common with all of the epic horror novels of the '80s that always came in big thick books. That being said, you