The Good Guy
Dean Koontz

"Are you him?"
"Who else would I be?"
"You look so... ordinary."
"I work at it."
Timothy Carrier, having a beer after work at his friend's tavern, enjoys drawing eccentric customers into amusing conversations. But the jittery man who sits next to him tonight has mistaken Tim for someone very different - and passes to him a manila envelope full of cash.
"Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she's gone."
The stranger walks out, leaving a photo of the pretty woman marked for death, and her address. But things are about to get worse. In minutes another stranger sits next to Tim. This one is a cold blooded killer who believes Tim is the man who has hired him.
Thinking fast, Tim says, "I've had a change of heart. You get the ten thousand - for doing nothing. Call it a no kill fee." He keeps the photo and gives the money to the hired killer. And when Tim secretly follows the man out of the tavern, he gets a further shock: the hired killer is a cop.
Suddenly, Tim Carrier, an ordinary guy, is at the center of a mystery of extraordinary proportions, the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer far more powerful than any cop... and as relentless as evil incarnate. But first Tim must discover within himself the capacity for selflessness, endurance, and courage that can turn even an ordinary man into a hero, inner resources that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy.

I've noticed that in some of Koont's novels, there seems to be an underlying skeletal plot. Boy meets girl. Girl is in mortal trouble that boy cannot and does not understand, but boy wants to help girl. Both because boy is a genuinely good person and also because boy likes the girl. A tightly wound, thrilling plot is involved with many twists, turns, and surprises. In the end, boy and girl end up saving each other and falling in love.

As odd as it sounds, this skeletal outline of a plot works, and it works well for a lot of Koontz's novels. This is one of those novels. Tim decides to take it upon himself to save the woman in the picture, even though he (and even she) has no idea why someone wants her dead.

The plot is sound, there's enough action to keep a reader interested, the primary and even the secondary characters are well rounded people and not two dimensional words on paper, and the ending is nothing you would expect. Very typical Koontz novel and in that, I'm giving it my recommendation and my typical Koontz novel rating of four out of five snails.

My rating: Four out of five snails.