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Velocity (Hardcover)

by Dean Koontz (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (1 Aug 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007196962
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007196968
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 389,572 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #78 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > K > Koontz, Dean

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Product Description

Review

'Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler' The Times 'Psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying.' The New York Times 'Koontz has near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.' Los Angeles Times 'Koontz has once again proven why he is one of the premier novelists of his generation.' Amazon.co.uk


Product Description

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 .
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Customer Reviews

59 Reviews
5 star:
 (22)
4 star:
 (18)
3 star:
 (11)
2 star:
 (5)
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 (3)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (59 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Art you'll not see at the Tate, 6 Oct 2006
By Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Velocity (Paperback)
"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 kill an elderly woman active in charity work ... The choice is yours." (The 1st note.)

Billy Wiles just wants to bar keep at a roadside tavern in Vineyard Hills, CA. And, of course, spend frequent evenings at the nursing home bedside of his fiancee Barbara, comatose these past four years after consuming a can of tainted vichyssoise. Billy doesn't have much of a life until he begins receiving mysterious notes that promise the slaughter of apparently random victims - promises that are always kept - by an elusive killer that, at one point, gets the drop on Wiles and nails one of his hands to the floor. To Billy's dismay, he's fallen down a rabbit hole into the world of a psycho who approaches murder as performance art.

I've read a smattering of Dean Koontz's novels, some of which have reached a level of bizarreness that they lose appeal for me. I appreciate more subtlety. In any case, with VELOCITY, Koontz steps back from the edge just far enough to make this a mystery thriller that, while still frightening, is also plausible. I understand that THE HUSBAND is in much the same vein, but better; it waits, much anticipated, on my unread shelf even now.

I have two niggling complaints about this book's plot. I wish Ivy Elgin, a waitress at the tavern with an interest in haruspicy, i.e., divination of the future from dead animals, had gotten a larger share of text time. She is, perhaps, the most potentially interesting character present. Finally, at the story's conclusion, I felt that the killer knew more about Wiles than me the reader. True, one learns that, through no fault of his own, Billy is forced at age fourteen to shoot both his parents, and that, as an adult, he's written a book of short stories. Beyond that, he's a virtual cipher. Since putting the same characters in a sequel isn't the author's usual style to the extent I know it, I doubt we shall see either Billy or Ivy again, and that's unfortunate.

VELOCITY approaches being a couldn't-put-it-down read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Reasonable but not Koontz best., 11 Jul 2006
By L. Tuck "Dave the Man" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Velocity (Paperback)
I did enjoy velocity, the main character Billy was interesting, The start and middle of the story was well thought out, but i have to agree with the other reviews that the ending made you feel 'oh is that it'. Good read but no where near as good as 'Dark rivers of the Heart' my fave Koontz read
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars I thought it was good........., 20 Jul 2006
By T. D. Kirk "dougall17" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Velocity (Paperback)
But not brilliant....i never had read a dean koontz book before and was attracted by the story on the front cover when i saw it in an airport a few months back.....i bought it from amazon....(cos it was cheaper).....and the book doesn't disappoint......a bit farcical at times.....but does provide a few good twists and turns along the way.....i agree it would make a good film too......good/likeable main character.....i would recommend this book, if you fancy a nice easy read/leave your brain on the floor type book!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't start reading this book if you plan to go to bed that night.
Great read, but one of Dean Koontz most scarey reads, I couldn't go to sleep I had to get up and finish reading the book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by C. Skinner

5.0 out of 5 stars A PAGE-TURNER...
Once I started this book, the plot grabbed me right from the beginning and would not let go. Even though it is a plot driven book, the main character is well developed, even... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Lawyeraau

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a good baddie
I picked this up in a charity shop last month, having greatly enjoyed "The Husband" by the same author. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Jeremy Walton

4.0 out of 5 stars Moral Ambiguities Galore
Billy Wiles, a nondescript bartender in Napa County, California, walks out to his car and finds a note telling him that if he doesn't involve the police, a young woman will be... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Graceann Macleod

4.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put down
This was my fourth Koontz novel , after The Face, The Taking and The Good Guy. I have to say this was up to the level I expected from Koontz, a real unputdownable thriller with... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Martin Belcher

5.0 out of 5 stars tarts out Tense and Just Gets Better
Napa Valley Bartender Billy Wiles is fairly content with the way his life is going. He's sort of reclusive, kind of enjoys being kind of a bartending shrink to his inebriated and... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Tiffany Ann

4.0 out of 5 stars Choices, choices, choices...
Choices are what Billy has to make in this book and they are not the choices he wants to make, a choice of who is to die and who is to live. Read more
Published 11 months ago by booklover

5.0 out of 5 stars Another excellent read
I'm a massive fan of Dean Koontz, and read this book whilst on holiday a few weeks ago, and couldn't put it down! A fast-paced book with a number of intiguing twists and turns. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Ms. L. J. Evans

1.0 out of 5 stars A real stinker
If you don't care that a thriller writer doesn't finally explain the (im)practicalities of how the perpetrators did what they did - let alone 'why'; if you're happy to find that... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Tarasque

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
This is the first book by this author that i have read and i was hooked from the first page! I love the way that this author writes, keeping the reading wanting more - will... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Becky

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