By the Light of the Moon
Dean Koontz

Dylan O'Conner is a gifted young artist just trying to do the right thing in life. He's on his way to an arts festival in Santa Fe when he stops to get a room for himself and his twenty year old autistic brother, Shep. But in a nightmarish instant, Dylan is attacked by a mysterious "doctor", injected with a strange substance, and told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him... or transform his life in the most remarkable way. Then he is told that he must flee - before the doctor's enemies hunt him down for the secret circulating through his body.
No one can help him, the doctor says, not even the police.
Stunned, disbelieving, Dylan is turned loose to run for his life... and straight into an adventure that will turn the next twenty four hours into an odyssey of terror, mystery - and wondrous discovery.
It is a journey that begins when Dylan and Shep's paths intersects with that of Jillian Jackson. Before that evening Jilly was a beautiful comedian whose biggest worry was whether she would ever find a decent man. Now she too is a carrier. And even as Dylan tries to convince her that they'll be safer sticking together, cold eyed men in a threatening pack of black Suburbans approach, only seconds before Jilly's classic Coupe DeVille explodes into thin air.
Now the three are on the run together, but with no idea whom they're running from - or why. Meanwhile Shep has begun exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. And whatever it is that's coursing through their bodies seems to have plunged them into one walking nightmare after another. Seized by sinister premonitions, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to crime scenes - just minutes before the crimes take place.
What this unfathomable power is, how they can use it to stop the evil erupting all around them, and why they have been chosen are only parts of a puzzle that reaches back into the tragic past and the dark secrets they all share: secrets of madness, pain, and untimely death. Perhaps the answer lies in the eerie, enigmatic messages that Shep, with precious time running out, begins to repeat, about a man who does his work "by the light of the moon".

From the very beginning, this is a typical Koontz novel (and that is not a bad thing). It's the usual formula of people who formerly did not know each other coming together under unusual circumstances which they don't fully understand and having to be on the run from some shadowy entity that wishes to kill them. This plot runs through many of Koontz's novels, but as long as the scenarios stay different, it's a formula that works and that is undeniably the trademark of this author.

The plot is engaging and there are some twists and turns that the reader will not see coming. The characters are dimensional enough to have the reader care what happens to them and the villain is fleshed out enough to be hated for what he was done and perhaps what he will do.

One of the themes in this novel that is not readily apparent from the jacket blurb is what would someone do if they started getting super-powers that allowed them to be able to stop horrific crimes. And that everyone, deep down, knows what is right and wrong.

I enjoyed reading this novel and thought it was a fun story that also made a good point in the end. I would recommend this to anyone.

My rating: Four out of five snails.