by Dean Koontz (Author)
The new fast-moving thriller from Dean Koontz is the story of an innocent man forced by a serial killer to choose who will be murdered next. William Wiles is an easygoing thirty-something, a bartender who lives a quiet life alone until a serial killer singles him out - not to kill him, but to force him to decide who the next victim will be. On his SUV Billy finds the first note: 'If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blonde schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.' Billy pays an informal visit to an acquaintance, Lanny Olson, who is a policeman, and who thinks the note is a prank. The schoolteacher dies. The next note reverses the choices: if Billy takes the note to the police, a mother of two young children will die. If he doesn't, an unmarried man who won't be much missed will die. Lanny has to take this note seriously but the deadline runs out before he can decide how to make his involvement official. Billy doesn't hear from him again because Lanny himself, unmarried, who will not be much missed, has become the next victim. There will be more communications from the killer, more hideous choices, with ever tighter decision times, and with each choice Billy is drawn deeper into an accelerating nightmare, which steadily becomes more personal, more confrontational, until he is isolated, with no one to turn to and no one to rely on but himself. Finally he must risk everything to save the intended victims .
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 01 Aug 2005
ISBN 10: 0007196962
ISBN 13: 9780007196968
`Koontz hits the bullseye here. There's surprise after surprise, including a killer finale ... A read-in-one-go novel' Independent on Sunday
Praise for Dean Koontz:
`Koontz knows how to do suspense and create a real fear of the unknown' Mirror
`Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler' The Times
`Psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying' New York Times
Dean Koontz is the author of more than a dozen New York Times No.1 bestsellers. His books have sold over 400 million copies worldwide, a figure that increases by more than 17 million copies per year, and his work is published in 38 languages. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lives with his wife Gerda and their dog Anna in southern California.