Velocity » (Reprint)

Amazingly prolific and relentlessly suspenseful, Dean Koontz can be counted on for chilling, sometimes gory stories that occasionally overlap genres. His novels can jump from straightforward crime to sci-fi to horror, but the one thing he's consistent about is delivering nail-biting yarns that have kept fans reading for more than three decades.

Dean Koontz's unique talent for writing terrifying thrillers with a heart and soul is nowhere more evident than in this latest suspense masterpiece that pits one man against the ultimate deadline. If there were speed limits for the sheer pulse-racing excitement allowed in one novel, VELOCITY would break them all. Get ready for the ride of your life.Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. But that is about to change. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. "If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond 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."It seems like a sick joke, and Bill's friend on the police force, Lanny Olson, thinks so too. His advice to Bill is to go home and forget about it....

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Velocity might be read as a flat-out exercise in escapist depravity - in other words, par for the course in popular crime fiction - were it not for the author's nonstop idiosyncrasies. Say this for Mr. Koontz: he is skillful in ways that make Velocity live up to its title, and nobody will ever accuse him of formulaic writing. He starts this book with a death by garden gnome. ("The gnome was made of concrete. Henry wasn't.") He includes a sweet young woman who believes she is a haruspex (a reader of entrails). In a further oblique nod to Scrabble, he makes Billy a woodcarver who likes listening to zydeco.