The finale of the Frankenstein trilogy by Dean Koontz is entitled
Dead and Alive. The story picks up right after the end of the second book,
City of Night. This tale is a modern addition to Mary Shelley's tale with Dr. Victor Frankenstein living in New Orleans under the guise of billionaire businessman Victor Helios. However, behind the scenes he is slowly and patiently working out his plan to take over the world. This is not the standard shtick of your everyday megalomaniac. Victor has been playing god, building his own ilk of soulless minions. In his time, he will unleash his powerful armies to scourge the Earth of the old race with his fully obedient new race. Victor is well on his way. However, unbeknownst to him, his creations, which look and act like any ordinary folks, are breaking down in alarming numbers. Some are losing their minds, some are going rogue and not staying true to their original programming, and some seem to be developing something like a conscience. Feelings like hope, compassion, and love. Yet Victor seems to have blinded himself to the reality of what is going on. He is far too quick to explain away the failures that he sees as singularities instead of the pandemic that it is.
Our protagonist trio consisting of two New Orleans homicide detectives Michael Maddison and Carson O'Connor, along with Dr. Frankenstein's first creation, the powerful and otherworldly entity Deucalion, are slowing working out a scheme to stop the seemingly unstoppable scheme that seems so close to becoming a reality. As they close the noose on Frankenstein, Koontz cleverly builds in enough plot elements along the way to set up other story paths that are ripe for mining in future books. In this end to his original trilogy, he wraps the story up in a nice bow after neatly tying up loose ends. The good guys vanquish their enemy and stop his scheme. They put the proverbial dagger through his heart, but the clever Frankenstein will live on, somehow.
Now onto the next part of the story, an extension of the original trilogy, in
Lost Souls.
