VELOCITY

by Dean Koontz

2006

Status

Available

Genres

Horror

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Standard Shelves

Publication

Bantam Books (2006), 460 pages

Description

Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours. It seems like a sick joke, and Bill's friend on the police force, Lanny Olson, thinks so too. His advice to Bill is to go home and forget about it. Besides, what could they do even if they took the note seriously? No crime has actually been committed. But less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered, and it's Bill's fault: he didn't convince the police to get involved. Now he's got another note, another deadline, another ultimatum--and two new lives hanging in the balance.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member dknudson

Danny Knudson
American Lit.
Mrs. Clark Evans
8-28-07

For my novel of choice I chose to read Dean Koontz’s Velocity. I love suspense/thriller novels, so I thought this would be a good choice. This was the first Dean Koontz book I had read, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I must say, I

wasn’t disappointed. Velocity was one of the most intense books I’ve ever read. I finished it in 3 days, and was left wanting more. The plot itself is this: a serial killer leaves Billy Wiles a note saying that if he should turn that note into the police he will kill Person A, and if he does nothing he will kill Person B. So Billy is trying to win a lose-lose game and beat a killer he can’t find. It was a simply fantastic book. I loved the setting, it never got too elaborate. There were very intense scenes that all took place within his home and other very secluded areas. Those situations are great, because you know that something is very close by, it could be right behind you, but you’ll have to keep reading to find out where and what it is. By the end of this book you question everything and become incredibly aware, almost paranoid, of your surroundings. Velocity messes with your mind and makes you question yourself. You find yourself wondering what you yourself would have done if you found yourself in a similar situation. This is why I think that murder mysteries are a great genre of literature: they tell a great and suspenseful story and really make you think, which should really be the goal of a book. The character of the killer himself was built up perfectly. You obviously don’t find out who the murderer is until the end, so that leaves you the entire novel to question and point fingers at the other characters. This book is like a very grisly, bloody version of the board game Clue, and I loved it. It was brilliantly written and built up and I’ll be sure to read it again.

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LibraryThing member PoohGrandpa

I bought this book when it came out and have read it three or four times already. I'm reading it again now. The story draws me in inexorably; it's like an obsession. I mull it over in my mind when I'm not reading it; then I am driven to read it again.

LibraryThing member bibliophile26

Koontz can be formulaic which is why I haven't read him in a long time before this summer. This book reminded me a lot of Intensity...it was a quick read and the games the serial killer plays with the main character are quite interesting.

LibraryThing member Fantasma

Some books need all our time and attention as ideal reading circumstances and this was one of those, unfortunately I didn't meet the conditions, and I can't say this was one of the best Koontz's I've ever read.
The part about "fast-moving thriller" is not totally correct, in some parts I think

Koontz forgets about moving on with the story and spends too many time rambling about Billy's thoughts. Or maybe it's just me and my bad temper ;)
Apart from that, it's a great thriller and makes us think what would we do if a totally nuts serial killer picked us to "play" with. Would we be able to make the same decisions Billy did?
Not full of surprises, but the little twists are nice.

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LibraryThing member rachael87

I thought this book was going to be really good - and it was, I couldn't put it down. Till the end. The ending was the biggest cop out ever. It's just like Koontz just couldn't be bothered with the rest. It's such an anti-climax, such a bad ending to a really good book.

LibraryThing member youthfulzombie

The word velocity does not apply. The book is not fast-paced, in fact there is never a real sense of urgency. I was really hoping for a heart-pounding thriller, which Koontz is certainly capable of (Intensity), but this book doesn’t hit the mark. The characters I found most interesting were not

expanded on - Ivy the entrail-reading waitress, and Barbara the comatose girlfriend. It doesn’t say much about the lead character(s) if a girl in a coma is more interesting.
Please won’t someone write me a good horror/thriller so I can go back to being my old jumpy self when I’m home alone or walking down a dark street?

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LibraryThing member Rickmaniac

original, shocking, grotesque, engaging. I couldn't put down this disturbing book, but had to see it through.

LibraryThing member CheriePie69

This was another one of Koontz's fast-paced, roller coaster rides. I loved how the chapters were short, some only 3 pages in length, which somehow that added to the whole speed/action thing. And based on the title, this is what he'd set out to accomplish and he did so with applomb.

Throughout the

story, you're left wondering right up until the very end, who's responsible for all the murders going on around Billy, and the notes they're leaving him that bring him into the fold. (I won't go into a synopsis here as I included it above.) And just when you think you've got it figured out, like Billy, you're thrown a curve ball, just like on a roller coaster. hehe

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LibraryThing member andyray

Although the actions and plot twists are excellent, the character of Billy Wiles is an improbable one. He acts more like James Bond than a small town bartender.

LibraryThing member adriel

"If you go to the police I will kill on old woman, if you don't I will kill a young school teacher." A barkeep begins to find cryptic notes, and the results that they describe turn out to be real. The heat increases as he realizes that he is being framed for the murders. I found the story wasn't

greatly engaging, gruesom, but still somewhat interesting.

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LibraryThing member lcrouch

Of all the Dean Koontz books I have read (and that is almost all of them), I have never been as turned off by a book as this one. It was more like a horror movie, than the beautiful/horrible/aweful literature I am used to reading from this man. How very disappointing. I got halfway through and

finally put it down, as it only got worse.

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LibraryThing member Omrythea

I have to admit I just couldn't stay with Koontz on this one... there seemed too much horror and grotesqueness of thought and not enough intrigue. I couldn't stick with it... just didn't want to have to delve so low.. decided to stop reading it.

LibraryThing member breezit

One of Koontz's best later books. This is slightly more graphic than some of his other novels, so it's not for everybody, but i really enjoyed it. One of my favorites.

LibraryThing member scrappyme

Not one of his best, didn't really enjoy it. Was disappointed in the ending.

LibraryThing member HvyMetalMG

Pretty intense thriller.

I've only read 3 other Koontz books out of what, over 20? This was certainly one of my favorites. The read was fast paced and I finished it in about 3 days, as it kept my attention.

Koontz could have gone into a little more detail about the characters and why they act the

way they do, but overall, the info provided made for a great story. The ending is pretty obvious, but Koontz builds a great story that it dosnet matter.

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LibraryThing member davidbain

Terrible book. Sloppy. It was an audiobook, took up the time while driving. Otherwise I wouldn't have finished it.

LibraryThing member califia74

Not as good as Intensity. Convulted plot, unsatisfying ending. Not as suspenseful as expected.

LibraryThing member Jim53

This was my first Koontz book. I did not enjoy it. He didn't give me enough of a reason to care about the protagonist and the things that were happening to him. Nor did I ever understand how the "bad guys" chose him. I hated the protagonist's responses and solution to his predicament. The

predicament was mildly interesting and thought-provoking, but the author could have done so much better with it. It seems that he had a couple of good ideas and threw in enough violence and filler to try to make a complete novel. Not recommended.

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LibraryThing member Djupstrom

Velocity poses an age old question...Who's life is worth more? A seemingly random person has to choose who should live, a young school teacher or an elderly charity activist. Great book. Very suspenseful.

LibraryThing member rholden

I read this book last summer. Basically, I was going to the beach and I wanted something to entertain myself with. When I went to Book Review with my friend, we searched the adventure section for an engaging book that would quickly grasp our attentions. We picked a lucky guess. It was exactly what

I needed. It was a piece of literature that I will remember forever, but it was an engaging, fun, adventurous book that I wanted to read with time on my hands. I recommend this book for times exactly like those.

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LibraryThing member Blazingice0608

A VERY fast paced thriller, this book is for anyone who likes the genre. Impossible to put down, this book will fly by very quickly. With a very interesting concept to back it up, the action and suspense never lets up, and your also left constantly guessing who the killer is, which i always love to

do in novels of this genre. If your a fan of Koontz, make sure you check this novel out. The only real downside to it at all is that the characters werent as fleshed out as they usually are in a Koontz novel, but the action made up for it.

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LibraryThing member grheault

Interesting premise, a note left on a car entangles the car owner in a damned if you do, damned if you don't life/death determination. The character's behavior fails to be believable, and story line seems lazy, outlined and then hastily filled in. I got annoyed at the hero, and dropped the book

after a goodly number of chapters hoping for better. I skipped to the end, found out whodunit and DNF.

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LibraryThing member hyunjoo

This was a good read. Maybe this is because it's coming from a woman, but I really enjoyed the fact that the protagonist Billy was so devoted to his wife who's in a coma. The theme of everlasting love was a plus for this thriller.

LibraryThing member figre

I had never read anything by Dean Koontz. I had heard some decent things about this book, so I picked it up to see.

If this is what popular literature is all about, then I do not want any piece of it. Mr. Koontz has managed to squeeze maybe 100 pages of story into 460 pages. He has taken a somewhat

interesting idea and managed to eliminate any real excitement or tension. And, in the process, he seems to have managed to ignore the basics of writing. One example. There is a chapter which shows the protagonist exploring the apartment of the man he suspects. (Let’s ignore the improbability of him getting in the apartment or the other events surrounding his access.) He finds mannequins in one room that have been treated as expressions of the suspect’s mental condition. The first mannequin is described and the chapter ends. Then the next chapter starts off by describing the next two mannequins?! Does Koontz understand the construction of a chapter? After a certain page-count, is it time to start a new chapter? Is there fear that a chapter that is too long might bore the reader? (Trust me; it isn’t the length of the chapters that is boring.) Another example (a somehow an even worse breach). Easily 90% of the paragraphs in this book are one sentence long. Again, what is the purpose of a paragraph? By splitting the paragraphs into individual sentences is Koontz trying to make sure that our short attention spans are not taxed? Completely ignoring whether the story is well told or not – this is bad writing on a technical level.

And, the ultimate problem with this tale? The conceit it is built upon is not believable. Billy finds a note indicating that if he does not go to the police a lovely, blond schoolteacher will be killed. If he goes to the police an elderly woman will be killed. That is a decent enough premise. However, as the story develops and it is evident that events will move forward with more murders, he decides (for reasons that are explained, but are unbelievable) to fight the murderer himself. I just don’t buy it. The reasoning is flimsy, and the justification for continual movement of the plot just isn’t true.

In this paperback edition, they have been nice enough to include the first two chapters of Koontz’s latest book. Thanks, but no thanks.

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LibraryThing member miyurose

I have a real love/hate relationship with Dean Koontz. I don't particularly care for some of his more supernatural stuff. However, this was just a good old-fashioned thriller. The situation Billy finds himself in is rather chilling, and the revelations at the end were surprising. It was good enough

to bring me back to Koontz after a long hiatus.

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