The Face of Fear

For a moment, seeing the green-eyed woman behind his eyes, Graham has not been aware of the world around him: the television audience, the studio, the cameras.

Graham Harris is a gifted clairvoyant, and during a late-night television interview, he "sees" a murder being committed. He knows that the killer is the man the police have named the Butcher - the brutal slayer of nine young women.

Learning of the psychic identification, the Butcher begins to stalk this "witness" to his crime, and traps Harris and his girlfriend at night in a vast forty-two-storey business building, hunting them relentlessly from floor to floor...

You and your friend Sarah are being chased by a homicidal maniac through an office building in the middle of the night. You take refuge in an empty office like frightened cockroaches, but the doors are forced open, revealing your antenna-quivering vulnerability. In desperation, you scramble up and down elevator shafts with one lame leg dangling helplessly behind, and try other life-threatening feats that seem to be more appealing than getting an ice-pick through your skull.

The most horrifying thing about this scenario: the person chasing you is not a disgruntled co-worker, and it's not your boss! It's a notoriously murderous rapist, and he's just about to get you or Sarah every turn of the way. And then you remember the terror of falling while climbing Mount Everest and you think you've figured out how to escape... but have you? You still haven't figured out who will be crushed by the monster snow-plow!

I've never read many thrillers before--much less Koontz--but I was trapped with this book in a strange hotel in a strange city, and was then kept awake the rest of the night wondering what those noises were outside my door. Koontz has, apparently, done it again. And I fear I may now be hooked on thrillers.