Synopsis
Acknowledged as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”(Rolling Stone ) and as one of today’s most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human. Now he delivers the page-turner of the season, an unforgettable journey to the heart of darkness and to the pinnacle of grace, at once chilling and wickedly funny, a brilliantly observed chronicle of good and evil in our time, of illusion and everlasting truth.
He’s Hollywood’s most dazzling star, whose flawless countenance inspires the worship of millions and fires the hatred of one twisted soul. His perfectly ordered existence is under siege as a series of terrifying, enigmatic “messages” breaches the exquisitely calibrated security systems of his legendary Bel Air estate.
The boxes arrive mysteriously, one by one, at Channing Manheim’s fortified compound. The threat implicit in their bizarre, disturbing contents seems to escalate with each new delivery. Manheim’s security chief, ex-cop Ethan Truman, is used to looking beneath the surface of things. But until he entered the orbit of a Hollywood icon, he had no idea just how slippery reality could be. Now this good man is all that stands in the way of an
insidious killer—and forces that eclipse the most fevered fantasies of a city where dreams and nightmares are the stuff of daily life. As a seemingly endless and ominous rain falls over southern California, Ethan will test the limits of perception and endurance in a world where the truth is as thin as celluloid and answers can be found only in the illusory intersection of shadow and light.
Enter a world of marvelous invention, enchantment, and implacable intent, populated by murderous actors and the walking dead, hit men and heroes, long-buried dreams and never-dying hope.
Here a magnificent mansion is presided over by a Scottish force of nature known as Mrs. McBee, before whom all men tremble. A mad French chef concocts feasts for the mighty and the malicious. Ming du Lac, spiritual adviser to the stars, has a direct line to the dead. An aptly named cop called Hazard will become Ethan’s ally, an anarchist will sow discord and despair, and a young boy named Fric, imprisoned by celebrity and loneliness, will hear a voice telling him of the approach of something unimaginably evil. Traversing this extraordinary landscape, Ethan will face the secrets of his own tragic past and the unmistakable premonition of his impending violent death as he races against time to solve the macabre riddles of a modern-day beast.
A riveting tour de force of suspense, mystery, and miraculous revelation, The Face is that rare novel that entertains, provokes, and uplifts at the same time. It will make you laugh. It will give you chills. It will fill you with hope.
From the Hardcover edition.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensberg University) and won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition while still a senior. Dean landed his first job after graduation with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where his assignment was to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. On the first day of work, he discovered that his predecessor had been beaten up by the very children he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks.
The following year was filled with challenges, but Koontz never gave up on his desire to be a writer. He wrote at night and during weekends, a practice he continued after leaving the poverty program and becoming an English teacher in a suburban school district outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
After Dean had taught for a year and a half in Harrisburg, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of the five years, Gerda had quit her job to manage the financial side of her husband's writing career.
Dean Koontz's books are published in 38 languages. Worldwide sales total more than 175 million copies, and that figure currently increases at a rate of more than 17 million copies a year. Ten of his novels have risen to number one on The New York Times hardcover best-seller list (Lightning, Midnight, Cold Fire, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, and The Husband). His books have also been number one bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden.
The New York Times has called his writing "psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying." New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is, "at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. [He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O'Conner or Walker Percy. . . scary, worthwhile reading." Of Cold Fire, a worldwide bestseller, the United Press International said, "An extraordinary piece of fiction. It will be a classic."
Dean has written the screenplay for the film adaptation of his novel Midnight, and he wrote and served as executive producer on The Face of Fear for Warner Brothers-CBS Television. Phantoms, based on the author's screenplay and starring Peter O'Toole and Joanna Going, is in production at Miramax. Intensity has been filmed by Peter Guber's Mandalay Entertainment as a miniseries for the Fox Network and is scheduled to air in the spring of 1997. Mandalay and Fox will team up again to develop Sole Survivor.
Dean and Gerda Koontz live in southern California.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover
“Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler.”
--The Times (London)
“Dean Koontz almost occupies a genre of his own. He is a master at building suspense and holding the reader spellbound.”
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Koontz has always had 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
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Inside Flap
The Face
Acknowledged as ?America?s most popular suspense novelist?(Rolling Stone ) and as one of today?s most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human. Now he delivers the page-turner of the season, an unforgettable journey to the heart of darkness and to the pinnacle of grace, at once chilling and wickedly funny, a brilliantly observed chronicle of good and evil in our time, of illusion and everlasting truth.
He?s Hollywood?s most dazzling star, whose flawless countenance inspires the worship of millions and fires the hatred of one twisted soul. His perfectly ordered existence is under siege as a series of terrifying, enigmatic ?messages? breaches the exquisitely calibrated security systems of his legendary Bel Air estate.
The boxes arrive mysteriously, one by one, at Channing Manheim?s fortified compound. The threat implicit in their bizarre, disturbing contents seems to escalate with each new delivery. Manheim?s security chief, ex-cop Ethan Truman, is used to looking beneath the surface of things. But until he entered the orbit of a Hollywood icon, he had no idea just how slippery reality could be. Now this good man is all that stands in the way of an
insidious killer?and forces that eclipse the most fevered fantasies of a city where dreams and nightmares are the stuff of daily life. As a seemingly endless and ominous rain falls over southern California, Ethan will test the limits of perception and endurance in a world where the truth is as thin as celluloid and answers can be found only in the illusory intersection of shadow and light.
Enter a world of marvelous invention, enchantment, and implacable intent, populated by murderous actors and the walking dead, hit men and heroes, long-buried dreams and never-dying hope.
Here a magnificent mansion is presided over by a Scottish force of nature known as Mrs. McBee, before whom all men tremble. A mad French chef concocts feasts for the mighty and the malicious. Ming du Lac, spiritual adviser to the stars, has a direct line to the dead. An aptly named cop called Hazard will become Ethan?s ally, an anarchist will sow discord and despair, and a young boy named Fric, imprisoned by celebrity and loneliness, will hear a voice telling him of the approach of something unimaginably evil. Traversing this extraordinary landscape, Ethan will face the secrets of his own tragic past and the unmistakable premonition of his impending violent death as he races against time to solve the macabre riddles of a modern-day beast.
A riveting tour de force of suspense, mystery, and miraculous revelation, The Face is that rare novel that entertains, provokes, and uplifts at the same time. It will make you laugh. It will give you chills. It will fill you with hope.
From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews
Start with Hollywood and some guardian angels. Add ananarchist with a sick sadistic side. Counter with an ex-cop securitychief trying to figure out the puzzle being set for him. Throw in aprecocious and lonely boy (Frick) with a vivid imagination, who is theantithesis of his movie-hero father. Voilà--suspense is born. DylanBaker narrates with a somewhat detached tone, which he colors withvarious shades of irony to suit the characters he has before him. Heattributes to the ghost/angel of the story a hoarse whisper andpresents Frick with an aspect of vulnerability and fantasy that befitshis age and makes him a sympathetic character. In all, the suspensebuilds smoothly and steadily in Baker's hands. J.E.M. Winner ofAudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
After the apple had been cut in half, the halves had been sewn together with coarse black thread.
Ten bold stitches were uniformly spaced. Each knot had been tied with a surgeon's precision.
The variety of apple, a red delicious, might have significance. Considering that these messages had been delivered in the form of objects and images, never in words, every detail might refine the sender's meaning, as adjectives and punctuation refined prose.
More likely, however, this apple had been selected because it wasn't ripe. Softer flesh would have crumbled even if the needle had been used with care and if each stitch had been gently cinched.
Awaiting further examination, the apple stood on the desk in Ethan Truman's study. The black box in which the apple had been packed also stood on the desk, bristling with shredded black tissue paper. The box had already yielded what clues it contained: none.
Here in the west wing of the mansion, Ethan's ground-floor apartment was comprised of this study, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Tall French windows provided a clear view of nothing real.
The previous occupant would have called the study a living room and would have furnished the space accordingly. Ethan did too little living to devote an entire room to it.
With a digital camera, he had photographed the black box before opening it. He had also taken shots of the red delicious from three angles.
He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core. He was reluctant to snip the stitches and to take a look at what might lie within.
Years as a homicide detective had hardened him in some respects. In other ways, too much experience of extreme violence had made him vulnerable.
He was only thirty-seven, but his police career was over. His instincts remained sharp, however, and his darkest expectations were undiminished.
A sough of wind insisted at the French panes. A soft tapping of blown rain.
The languid storm gave him excuse enough to leave the apple waiting and to step to the nearest window.
Frames, jambs, rails, muntins—every feature of every window in the great house had been crafted in bronze. Exposure to the elements promoted a handsome mottled-green patina on exterior surfaces. Inside, diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown.
The glass in each pane was beveled at every edge. Even in the humblest of service rooms—the scullery, the ground-floor laundry—beveling had been specified.
Although the residence had been built for a film mogul during the last years of the Great Depression, no evidence of a construction budget could be seen anywhere from the entrance foyer to the farthest corner of the last back hall.
When steel sagged, when clothes grew moth-eaten on haberdashery racks, when cars rusted on showroom floors for want of customers, the film industry nevertheless flourished. In bad times as in good, the only two absolute necessities were food and illusions.
From the tall study windows, the view appeared to be a painting of the kind employed in motion-picture matte shots: an exquisitely rendered dimensional scene that, through the deceiving eye of the camera, could serve convincingly as a landscape on an alien planet or as a place on this world perfected as reality never allowed.
Greener than Eden's fields, acres of lawn rolled away from the house, without one weed or blade of blight. The majestic crowns of immense California live oaks and the drooping boughs of melancholy deodar cedars, each a classic specimen, were silvered and diamonded by the December drizzle.
Through skeins of rain as fine as angel hair, Ethan could see, in the distance, the final curve of the driveway. The gray-green quartzite cobblestones, polished to a sterling standard by the rain, led to the ornamental bronze gate in the estate wall.
During the night, the unwanted visitor had approached the gate on foot. Perhaps suspecting that this barrier had been retrofitted with modern security equipment and that the weight of a climber would trigger an alarm in a monitoring station, he'd slung the package over the high scrolled crest of the gate, onto the driveway.
The box containing the apple had been cushioned by bubble wrap and then sealed in a white plastic bag to protect it further from foul weather. A red gift bow, stapled to the bag, ensured that the contents would not be mistaken for garbage.
Dave Ladman, one of two guards on the graveyard shift, retrieved the delivery at 3:56 a.m. Handling the bag with care, he had carried it to the security office in the groundskeeper's building at the back of the estate.
Dave and his shift partner, Tom Mack, x-rayed the package with a fluoroscope. They were looking for wires and other metal components of an explosive device or a spring-loaded killing machine.
These days, some bombs could be constructed with no metal parts. Consequently, following fluoroscopy, Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air.
When the package proved clean, the guards unwrapped it. Upon discovering the black gift box, they had left a message on Ethan's voice mail and had set the delivery aside for his attention.
At 8:35 this morning, one of the two guards on the early shift, Benny Nguyen, had brought the box to Ethan's apartment in the main house. Benny also arrived with a videocassette containing pertinent segments of tape from perimeter cameras that captured the delivery.
In addition, he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother's com tay cam, a chicken-and-rice dish of which Ethan was fond.
"Mom's been reading candle drippings again," Benny said. "She lit a candle in your name, read it, says you need to be fortified."
"For what? The most strenuous thing I do these days is get up in the morning."
"She didn't say for what. But not just for Christmas shopping. She had that temple-dragon look when she talked about it."
"The one that makes pit bulls bare their bellies?"
"That one. She said you need to eat well, say prayers without fail each morning and night, and avoid drinking strong spirits."
"One problem. Drinking strong spirits is how I pray."
"I'll just tell Mom you poured your whiskey down the drain, and when I left, you were on your knees thanking God for making chickens so she could cook com tay cam."
"Never knew your mom to take no for an answer," Ethan said.
Benny smiled. "She won't take yes for an answer, either. She doesn't expect an answer at all. Only dutiful obedience."
Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the thin rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air.
Watching weather clarified his thinking.
Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams.
From his uniform days through his plainclothes career, friends on the force had said that he did too much thinking. Some of them were dead.
The apple had come in the sixth black box received in ten days. The contents of the previous five had been disturbing.
Courses in criminal psychology, combined with years of street experience, made Ethan hard to impress in matters regarding the human capacity for evil. Yet these gifts provoked his deep concern.
In recent years, influenced by the operatically flamboyant villains in films, every common gangbanger and every would-be serial killer, starring in his own mind movie, could not simply do his dirty work and move along. Most seemed to be obsessed with developing a dramatic persona, colorful crime-scene signatures, and ingenious taunts either to torment their victims beforehand or, after a murder, to scoff at the claimed competence of law-enforcement agencies.
Their sources of inspiration, however, were all hackneyed. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown.
The sender of the black boxes succeeded where others failed. For one thing, his wordless threats were inventive.
When his intentions were at last known and the threats could be better understood in light of whatever actions he took, they might also prove to be clever. Even fiendishly so.
In addition, he conferred on himself no silly or clumsy name to delight the tabloid press when eventually they became aware of his game. He signed no name at all, which indicated self-assurance and no desperate desire for celebrity.
For another thing, his target was the biggest movie star in the world, perhaps the most guarded man in the nation after the President of the United States. Yet instead of stalking in secret, he revealed his intentions in wordless riddles full of menace, ensuring that his quarry would be made even more difficult to reach than usual.
Having turned the apple over and over in his mind, examining the details of its packaging and presentation, Ethan fetched a pair of cuticle scissors from the bathroom. At last he returned to the desk.
He pulled the chair from the knee space. He sat, pushed aside the empty gift box, and placed the repaired apple at the center of the blotter.
The first five black boxes, each a different size, and their contents had been examined for fingerprints. He had dusted three of the deliveries himself, without success.
Because the black boxes came without a word of explanation, the authorities would not consider them to be death threats. As long as the sender's intention remained open to debate, this failed to be a matter for the police.
Deliveries 4 and 5 had been trusted to an old friend in the print lab of the Scientific Investigation Division of the Los Angeles Police Departmen...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Search results for The Face
Seller Image
The Face
Seller: -OnTimeBooks-, Phoenix, AZ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: good. A copy that has been read, remains in good condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact. The spine and cover show signs of wear. Pages can include notes and highlighting and show signs of wear, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. 100% GUARANTEE! Shipped with delivery confirmation, if you're not satisfied with purchase please return item! Ships via media mail. Seller Inventory # OTV.0739307452.G
Seller Image
The Face
Seller: Scissortail, Oklahoma City, OK, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: good. This is a pre-loved book that shows moderate signs of wear from previous reading. You may notice creases, edge wear, or a cracked spine, but it remains in solid, readable condition.Please note:-May include library or rental stickers, stamps, or markings.-Supplemental materials e.g., CDs, access codes, inserts are not guaranteed.-Box sets may not come with the original outer box. If it does, the box will not be in perfect condition. -Sourced from donation centers; authenticity not verified with publisher. Your satisfaction is our top priority! If you have any questions or concerns about your order, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you for shopping with us and supporting small businessâ"happy reading! Seller Inventory # STM.HKM