The Face of Fear
Dean Koontz

To stop a brutal killer, the NYPD enlists the help of clairvoyant Graham Harris. He sees the murders in his mind - sometimes at the moment they are happening. Then he sees the most terrifying vision of all - his own murder

Both the police and psychic Graham Harris are after a killer that has been dubbed The Butcher. He seems to only kill women, and cuts them up in a gruesome way when he does so. While on a local New York late night talk show, Graham has a vision of a murder right as it is happening.

Due to this vision, the Butcher comes to the conclusion that Graham must die as well. His visions are dead on and sooner or later, Graham will be the one to bust him. So, while Graham and his wife are working late on the 40th floor of a high rise building, the Butcher goes after them. The building is locked. The phones are dead. The security guards and the handful of people that were working late are dead. It is only Graham, his wife, and the killer. And to try and survive, they need to use mountain climbing equipment to scale down the side of the building in the middle of a blizzard.

This book is rather exciting and has some unexpected twists and turns. The first part of the book sets up the killer and his pattern. The second part is the hunt of Graham and his wife. While the characters aren't as fully fleshed out as I normally like, they are realistic and the action more than makes up for it.

This book is a fairly quick read - I was able to read it in the span of two nights. I actually wanted it to last longer, which is a good thing. The only thing that bothered me about it was the lead detective on the case - every single time he spoke he had to say something self-deprecating. What started out as a quirk of the character quickly became annoying, because that's pretty much all he did. While that did pull me out of the novel, in the end, it all did come together nicely and I would recommend it.

My rating: Four out of five snails.