VELOCITY
by Dean Koontz
Bantam Dell
www.bantamdell.com
ISBN 0-553-80415-4
Genre: Mystery
Hardback, 400 pages, $27.00

Billy Wiles lives a serene life; working days tending bar and visiting his coma-suffering fiancée in his off-hours. Until one evening when he finds a note under the windshield wiper of his car telling him if he takes the note to the police, a schoolteacher will be murdered; if he does not, an elderly woman will die. Unsure whether or not this is a prank, Billy shows it to a friend on the police force, who tells him to forget about it. However, when Billy learns of the death of a young female schoolteacher, he is sickened. From that point on, the killer plays a murderous game of selection with Billy through notes giving deadlines and choices. Since the killer leaves clues indicating he is familiar with Billy's life, Billy becomes convinced the killer's finale will be his comatose fiancée. And this motivates Billy to find the killer before it's too late.

In this thriller, Dean Koontz does not stray from what has become, for him, a common thread with his books which always remains at the very center of the story: the never-ending love between a man and a woman. An exciting, suspenseful plot with a rather climatic ending, this one will not disappoint.