Although it was originally announced that the fourth, fifth and sixth novels would form a second trilogy,[2] the cover for The Dead Town states it is the final volume.
While the original Monster was made with parts from dead humans, Victor Frankenstein is now using modern technology to create more creatures, particularly synthetic biology.
The new race he is making is constructed and designed from the bottom-up, and can be seen as bio androids, artificial humans made of flesh.
One of the primary characters of the series, Carson is a tough and occasionally brutal detective whose best friend is a fellow officer, Michael Maddison.
Carson has a penchant for brute force and firepower, but it is her obvious compassion as she cares for Arnie that prompts Deucalion to come to her for aid in hunting his creator.
While Carson acts as the "straight man" of the duo, Michael often plays the role of her foil, his flippant personality bouncing off her very serious one.
Helios has acquired wealth and power from selling his knowledge to, among others, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and the People's Republic of China.
Additionally, he is a sexual sadist and a militant atheist, beating Erika to reinforce his own sense of power and violently certain that there is nothing supernatural in the world or anything that he cannot understand.
At the end of the third book he was finally killed following the destruction of his farms, with most of the new race dying along with him (The reasoning behind this is that if he cannot become a god, he refused to let his creations outlast their creator) with only a few remaining.
He is naturally extremely arrogant, which has resulted in a degree of carelessness and inability to realize his own failures, continuing to create his creatures with the same programmed beliefs about the nature of existence simply because he believes it, failing to recognise that his creatures "self-destruct" because of the spiritual void in their existences and dismissing his "failures" as just mistakes in the equipment.
Another interesting byproduct is Deucalion's innate understanding of "the quantum nature of the universe", which allows him to teleport vast distances instantly and make objects (thus far, only coins) disappear and reappear at will.
In Koontz's continuity, when the monster attempted to attack Frankenstein, the doctor activated a small bomb he had implanted inside his creation's head as insurance against treachery; though Deucalion was not killed, half of his face was badly deformed and heavily scarred.
After the events in Mary Shelley's book, he fled to America and gradually became the man he is today, hiding in carnival sideshows and eventually leaving for a Tibetan monastery to find peace.
Designed to be completely devoted to him, his misogyny has resulted in brutal "terminations" of the past four Erikas for failures ranging from outright rebellion to exhibitions of free will.
A sexual sadist, he deliberately designs the Erika models with specific "defects" (such as the "vulnerabilities" of shame, pain and strangulation), and he takes great pleasure in beating them during sex.
Erika IV read extensively, such as Emily Dickinson or Charles Dickens, leading her to question her husband's plans due to her inability to reconcile the "inferiority" of the Old Race with their ability to create such incredible works of art or commit such noble acts as sacrificing themselves for those they love.
As a result, she was recruited by Karloff, an experimental disembodied head that could psychically control an unattached hand from afar, to kill Helios.
As a result of her predecessor's book-inspired independence, Erika V is forbidden to read, but her thoughts are filled with literary allusions because various snippets were programmed into her mind because Victor felt it necessary for her to have some general "literary" knowledge for light conversation (Although these details are relatively limited, such as her knowing that Romeo and Juliet were prominent lovers in fiction without knowing how their story ended).
Helios experimented with grafting cockroach and feline DNA onto the basic New Race genome, intending to build Werner's physical resilience and various other "improvements".
Originating as a tumor growing from within and later bursting out of Harker, the physically hideous troll has metamorphosed into a form free from Helios's control.
Cursed with a wide variety of mental illnesses including OCD and agoraphobia, Randal Six escapes his cell to seek out Arnie, whom he saw in a news clipping, apparently very happy.
The concept for the series was adapted from a treatment written by Koontz and Anderson for the 2004 TV movie Frankenstein, which was produced for the USA Network.