False Memory
Dean Koontz

Martie Rhodes is a young wife, a successful video game designer, and a compassionate woman who takes her agoraphobic friend, Susan, to therapy sessions. Susan is so afraid of leaving her apartment that even these trips to the doctor's office become ordeals for both women - but with each trip a deeper emotional bond forms between them.
Then one morning Martie experiences a sudden and inexplicable fear of her own, a fleeting but disquieting terror of her own shadow. The episode is over so quickly it leaves her shaken but amused. The amusement is short lived. For as she is about to check her makeup, she realizes that she is terrified to look in the mirror and confront the reflection of her own face.
As the episodes of this traumatic condition - autophobia - build, the lives of Martie and her husband Dustin, change drastically. Desperate to discover the reasons for his wife's sudden and seemingly inevitable descent into mental chaos, Dusty takes Martie to the renowned therapist who has been treating Susan, and tries to reconstruct the events of recent months in a frantic search for clues. As he comes closer to the shocking truth, Dusty finds himself afflicted with a condition even more bizarre and fearsome than Martie's.

Due to the mature subject matter of this novel, especially in what the therapist is really doing to his clients, this book is meant for adults only. There is sex and violence that is not appropriate for the younger crowd. In face, some of the sexual situations might even cause an adult to put down this novel. Know this when going into it.

That being said, overall this was an excellent read. Yes, there are mature and disturbing sexual scenes and scenes of violence, but they are needed for the story development and to show the ruthlessness of a man most people trust completely - a psychiatrist.

In this novel, the therapist is not helping his patients, but instead is giving them phobias and then taking them away so that he looks to be one of the best in his business. He also sends others into deep hypnotic trances and has them do his dirty work for him.

False Memory is a very frightening depiction of what could happen if a doctor who was completely trusted abused that trust in the worst possible ways. What makes it so frightening isn't even the graphic scenes, but the fact that hypnosis is very real and therefore makes this story all the more terrifying. One tends to be more afraid of a scenario that could actually happen - and this is one of those times.

The characters are extremely well rounded, even the secondary characters, and while they might not always do what we would do, all of their moves are plausible.

The ending is a doozy, and when you find out why certain people have been targeted by this therapist, it will shock you.

I recommend this novel as long as you don't mind some rather graphic and disturbing scenes.

My rating: Four out of five snails.