77 Shadow Street
Dean Koontz

The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of the old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800's as a tycoon's dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970's as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents - a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a young driven money manager among them - the Pendleton's magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.
But now inexplicable shadows caper across the walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not quite human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton's past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a deadly tide from which few have escaped.

This is one of my favorite Dean Koontz books of all time. It's an absolutely thrilling read and isn't at all predictable. From the start to the finish, I was hooked. For me, it was also a bit of a quick read because the story flowed together perfectly. For most authors if would be difficult to have a story centered around many main characters all within the same building, but Koontz is able to go from one to the other seamlessly.

The basics of a good story are all there - realistic and believable characters that you care about, villains that you both can and cannot relate to, edge of your seat suspense, and a story that comes together in a most unexpected way.

There are characters you will like, characters you will dislike, creatures you won't fully understand (and are not supposed to), and main characters that die... or worse.

While this book seems like a supernatural thriller at first, in the end it is much more than that. I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I will say that all of the happenings at the Pendleton are because of something that has yet to come - and when the reader finds this out it is most shocking.

I highly recommend this book.

My rating: Five out of five snails.