7. Velocity

By Dean Koontz

I'm actually a few books behind now, so hopefully I'll get some posts up in the next week or so.

A freind loaned me "Velocity" after a talk we were having about pulp fiction and my recent Stephen King Binge. As you would expect from the title, its a fast paced book. Interestingly, it starts of leisurly and kind of witty, and after the main character discovers a disturbing note left for him on the car, it transforms the main character's life (and the book) into an unrelenting nightmare.

This is again one of those books that you don't want to give too much away. It begins with a note and a choice - Billy, a bartender, finds a note on his car that offers him a choice from a serial killer. If he goes to the police, he'll kill a young school teacher, if he doesn't go to the police, he'll kill an older woman active in philanthropy- his dilemas begin here, and his choices get harder.

Basically, the book is fun, and nothing more. It is the kind of book that fulfills its own prophesies- if there is a mention of a gun in one scene, you can expcet someone to get shot in the next. In that way, the outcome was relativly easy to predict, and although Koontz does manage to throw you off the trail occasionally, the scent never goes completely dead.

Overall score? A for a "sitting-on-the-john-book", and C- for "I feel smarter for having read this".