Velocity Review

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TITLE: Velocity

AUTHOR: Dean Koontz

PUBLISHER: Bantam Books

PUBLICATION DATE: 5/24/2005

FORMAT: Hardcover (0-553-80415-4)

PAGES: 416

SOURCE: I bought

MY RATING: 

INSIDE COVER SUMMARY: Billy Wiles 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 somewhere in Napa County. If you do take this not to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have six hours to decide. The choice is yours.

It seems like a sick joke, and Billy's friend on the police force, Lanny Olsen, thinks so too. His advice to Billy is to go home and forget about it. Besides, what could they do even if they took the note seriously? No crime has actually been committed.

But less than twenty-four hours late, a young blonde schoolteacher is found murdered, and it's Billy's fault: he didn't convince the police to get involved. Now he's got another note, another deadline, another ultimatum...and two new lives hanging in the balance. 

Suddenly Billy's average, seemingly innocuous life takes on the dimensions and speed of an accelerating nightmare. Because the notes are coming faster, the deadline growing tighter, and the killer becoming bolder and crueler with every communication--until Billy is isolated with the terrifying knowledge that he alone has the power of life and death over a psychopath's innocent victims. Until the struggle between good and evil is intensely personal. Until the most chilling words of all are: The choice is yours.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: This is my first ever Dean Koontz book and one of the very few adult books I read this year. This book creeped me out. I would never want to be put in Billy's situation. I was definitely hooked while reading this. I wanted to know who was behind everything and how the main character was going to deal with the next crazy thing that this killer would come up with.

CHARACTERS: While I couldn't really relate to Billy, the main character, I could completely sympathize with him. 

COVER: Bright, eye catching and to the point.