THE GOOD GUY

We live life sometimes on auto-pilot.

Our bruised hearts murmur to withdraw, to exist, to try to forget.

Life is patient. Life lures you to sleep. Then, the snake of Change strikes.

Timothy Carrier is a man with a past that will not give him peace.

Having a beer after work at his friend’s tavern, he tries to distract his mind from haunting memories by 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.

Bad right? 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 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,

the inner resources that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy.

This is the novel that introduced me to Dean Koontz.

Koontz uses an interesting technique to build suspense.

While we gradually learn, through Tim's incredible skill in evading the killer and his unflappable grace under pressure, that he must harbor a past profession in which he cut things other than stone,

Koontz withholds this secret from the reader until the final pages of the book.

He does the same with Linda and her past, contributing not only to the suspense but also to the extended first-date-type-thrill of romance that blossoms amidst the carnage.

Take this one with you this summer's end or have it on hand for times when you want a good read. You won't be disappointed.

Koontz writes well, with a dark, sarcastic style that matches the tension and violence of his situations. His images are well chosen and original;

indeed, Koontz is superior to many adepts of supposedly more serious literature. The Good Guy is something of a cross between Raymond Chandler and the TV series 24:

pulsing with action but richly, idiosyncratically portrayed.

It is also a pure thriller: unlike most of Koontz's prose, classified as horror, it doesn't involve the supernatural. I doubt you will hold it in your hands longer than three days. In fact, you will be tempted to read it on one sitting.

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