Dean Koontz is always a winner with me! Great characters, suspense, romance. Highly recommended.

FROM AMAZON: Harry Lyon is a rational man, a cop who refuses to let his job harden his soul. His partner urges him to surrender to the chaos of life. But Harry believes in order and reason. Then one fateful day, he's forced to shoot a man—and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes utters the haunting words that challenge Harry Lyon’s sanity...

“Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...” ( )

this is the first Dean Koontz book i read and i have to say i enjoyed.

the characters were pretty good and the way how he wrote them into a situation and to see how they try to over come those challenges was fun. the villain is interesting and has a crazy power and his dialog was very edgy which makes sense given he is a murderer after all.

i only have 2 complaints being there is a scene at the begging where the 2 main characters are chasing down a guy who loves his Elvis Presley and i found it dragged on a little to long. also a part of the ending i found a little anti climatic. but other wise i like this book quite a bit and it was easy to read through. i would not mind reading more koontz books as there is a few that interest me

one thing that surprised me and this is not a spoiler is that there is a part of this book that did creep me out. this book had a part with spiders and the way it described them made me cringe. if your like me and are afraid of them then just be warned but if not then that is not gonna be an issue. this is not a flaw just something to keep in mind before reading as it came out of no where for me. ( )

Eh, this is the book that the last one I read, Fallen, was trying to be, and to be honest, this one wasn’t even that great. Which I guess is pretty bad for Fallen...anyway, this one had its moments, the plot made sense, for the most part, but there was also stuff missing (like why was Ticktock picking on a homeless guy and a single mother and child). It wasn’t bad, the writing was good, but the plot holes hurt it for me, and well, it was kinda weird reading from a dogs point of view... ( )

El detective de la policía Harry Lion es un perfeccionista al que le agradan los trajes impecablemente cortados, su piso inmaculadamente limpio y sus casos de homicidio extremadamente claros, pero Connie Gulliver, su compañera, le convida a abrazar el caos: una extraña profecia le anuncia su propia muerte y una pesadilla surreal viene a sustituir el antiguo orden por un acoso de extrañas sorpresas y peligros inimaginables. Un viento de terror lo envuelve y se comunica al lector, a quien Dean Koontz, el maestro indiscutido en estos temas, lleva por senderos de emoción insuperable.

A re-read for me. This novel’s an interesting concept, one that explains why people often label Koontz a horror writer (when I think of him as a supernatural thriller writer) — a mysterious, changing antagonist who’s seemingly impossible to escape. This is definitely supernatural, regardless of what explanation the reader imagines while speeding through the pages. I have to admit, despite my love of dogs, the author lost me a bit using a dog’s POV, though that’s pivotal to the plot. Using human descriptions like ‘policeman’ which a dog would have no concept of pulled me out of the story, but eventually, I just went along with it and enjoyed it, finding it cute it places. This feels like a book of two halves. The first when we don’t know the cause, the second after we have some inkling and have identified the baddie. Koontz has taken a well-known creation and used it in a modern setting to excellent effect. Perhaps not his best, but certainly imaginative and a reminder of why I loved early Koontz novels. Some of the social problems mentioned in the book seem almost ahead of their time, or perhaps it’s that those problems have worsened and were only beginning then; even so, the author included them, though a few of the societal issues and scenes go on too long and feel overly described. I didn’t enjoy reading the sections from the antagonist’s POV possibly because he’s a little cliched and several of the horror elements weren’t necessary for me to dislike him. Worth a read and even a re-visit many years later. ( )