False Memory: A Novel
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Some days, you just shoulda stayed in bed. Martie Rhodes has a day like that when, up to her regular chore of taking her severely agoraphobic friend, Susan, to the psychotherapist, she is periodically seized by panic. It's not like Susan's panic over being out in the open, but instead it is the feeling that every everyday object that could be a weapon--knives, forks, tools, wine bottles, etc.--will be, and that she will use them to assault her husband. Meanwhile, said spouse, house-painting contractor Dusty (sic), is having his own overly interesting morning, risking his neck on a client's tile roof as he tries to save his half-brother Skeet's neck; the lad is high again, on God knows what all, and has decided to ascend to the angels via a head-down, 40-foot descent to the hard asphalt driveway. Both Martie and Dusty succeed in their errands of mercy, but later, Martie goes round the bend at home while waiting for Dusty, and Dusty, after settling Skeet in detox and observing him fall suddenly into a tres weird faux coma and then wake from it as suddenly, starts feeling paranoid himself, especially after he gets home and discovers most of the household utensils in the trash can and Martie chopping the yard tools to smithereens. Is all this just coincidence? In a Dean Koontz novel, no way! Evil therapy, referred to pointedly but obliquely by the book's title, is the ultimate culprit in a tale that is remarkably engaging, despite having so many pages and so little plot. --Ray Olson

Koontz's latest novel should please his longtime fans but probably not newcomers. Martie Rhodes takes her best friend, Susan, to therapy sessions twice a week. Susan suffers from agoraphobia, a fear of crowds, which leaves her afraid to leave her apartment. Getting Susan to therapy is hard enough, but on this particular day it gets even harder. Earlier that morning, Martie looked at herself in the mirror and found she was terrified of her reflection. She has developed autophobia, a fear of self. With the vilest villain Koontz has created, the truth behind their phobias will be more horrible than Susan or Martie can imagine. False Memory could have been trimmed by 200 pages and not lost any impact. Still, the characters are rich, and the main story is compelling. Though it is not great Koontz, good Koontz is still better than most and should be added to general fiction collection. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/99.]--Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Koontz widens his canvas dramatically while dimming the hard brilliance common to his shorter winners:1995's taut masterpiece, Intensity, and 1998's moon-drenched midsummer nightmare, Seize the Night. This time the author takes up mind control, wiring his tale into the brainwashing epics The Manchurian Candidate and last spring's film The Matrix. The laser-beam brightness of his earlier bestsellers fades, however, as he stuffs each scene with draining chitchat and extra plotting that seldom rings with novelty. Martine "Martie" Rhodes, a video-game designer, has developed a rare mental disorder: autophobia, fear of oneself. Meanwhile, her husband Dusty's young half-brother, Skeet Caulfield, has decided to jump off the roof of a building the two men are repairing--because Skeet has seen the Angel of the next world, who has revealed that things are pretty wonderful there, and he wants to come on over. Martie's best friend, real-estate agent Susan Jagger, is newly coping with agoraphobia, fear of the outdoors. What's more, Susan knows she's being visited and raped at night by her separated husband, Eric, although all her doors and windows are locked. She can't remember these rapes, but her panties are stained with semen. So when she sets up a camcorder to record her sleeping hours, she gets a huge surprise after viewing the tape. How these mental and physical events have come about--ditto the psychiatric background of the Keanuphobe millionairess who shows up (yes! she fears Keanu Reeves)--has something to do with the ladies' psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Ahriman, the son of a famous dead movie director whose eyes the doctor keeps in a bottle of formaldehyde and studies, in hopes of siphoning off Dad's inspiration. Although the whole story could have been told to better effect in 300 pages, Koontz deftly sidesteps clichÇs of expression while nonetheless applying an air pump to the suspense: an MO that keeps his yearly 17-million book sales afloat. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Some days, you just shoulda stayed in bed. Martie Rhodes has a day like that when, up to her regular chore of taking her severely agoraphobic friend, Susan, to the psychotherapist, she is periodically seized by panic. It's not like Susan's panic over being out in the open, but instead it is the feeling that every everyday object that could be a weapon--knives, forks, tools, wine bottles, etc.--will be, and that she will use them to assault her husband. Meanwhile, said spouse, house-painting contractor Dusty (sic), is having his own overly interesting morning, risking his neck on a client's tile roof as he tries to save his half-brother Skeet's neck; the lad is high again, on God knows what all, and has decided to ascend to the angels via a head-down, 40-foot descent to the hard asphalt driveway. Both Martie and Dusty succeed in their errands of mercy, but later, Martie goes round the bend at home while waiting for Dusty, and Dusty, after settling Skeet in detox and observing him fall suddenly into a tres weird faux coma and then wake from it as suddenly, starts feeling paranoid himself, especially after he gets home and discovers most of the household utensils in the trash can and Martie chopping the yard tools to smithereens. Is all this just coincidence? In a Dean Koontz novel, no way! Evil therapy, referred to pointedly but obliquely by the book's title, is the ultimate culprit in a tale that is remarkably engaging, despite having so many pages and so little plot. ((Reviewed December 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

Koontz's latest novel should please his longtime fans but probably not newcomers. Martie Rhodes takes her best friend, Susan, to therapy sessions twice a week. Susan suffers from agoraphobia, a fear of crowds, which leaves her afraid to leave her apartment. Getting Susan to therapy is hard enough, but on this particular day it gets even harder. Earlier that morning, Martie looked at herself in the mirror and found she was terrified of her reflection. She has developed autophobia, a fear of self. With the vilest villain Koontz has created, the truth behind their phobias will be more horrible than Susan or Martie can imagine. False Memory could have been trimmed by 200 pages and not lost any impact. Still, the characters are rich, and the main story is compelling. Though it is not great Koontz, good Koontz is still better than most and should be added to general fiction collection. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/99.]--Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

This is creepy. Martie Rhodes is dutifully helping an agoraphobic friend when she develops a frightening condition of her own: autophobia, or fear of self. Soon her husband is battling obsessions that are even worse. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

After two successive novels in his Chris Snow trilogy (Fear Nothing; Seize the Night), Koontz offers a stand-alone that's less thematically ambitious but more viscerally exciting than either. Except for its length this is the longest of his more than 60 novels and the amazing fertility of its prose, the novel feels like one of Koontz's earlier tales, with a simple core plot, strong everyman heroes (plus one deliciously malevolent villain) and pacing that starts at a gallop and gets only faster. The heroes are Southern Californians Dusty and Martie Rhodes, he a house-painting contractor, she a computer game designer. The villain is psychiatrist Mark Ahriman. The narrative opens with an extended, tense tour-de-force featuring the sort of crosscutting that most writers use to climax their thrillers. As Martie shepherds her terrified, agoraphobic friend, Susan, on a visit to Susan's shrink (Ahriman), Dusty deals with his drug-addled stepbrother/employee, Skeet, about to jump to his death from the roof of Dusty's latest project. Skeet leaps, taking Dusty with him, but both survive; as Dusty checks Skeet into rehab, Martie suffers her first of several horrific phobic episodes, in which she imagines mutilating Dusty with household items. Seeking help, she and Dusty turn to Ahriman, who, it's eventually revealed first to the reader, then to the couple, is responsible for all the trouble: he's a homicidal sociopath who, in search of psychosexual thrills, has deep-hypnotized Susan, Skeet, Martie, Dusty and others to obey his every command. The otherwise superslick narrative knots up toward the end, when Koontz piles up improbabilities and overcomplicates Ahriman's motives, tying them to a revenge plot that's explicated through too much talk. Otherwise, this is an expertly crafted, ornate suspenser, with the affecting love story between Dusty and Marie arcing rays of hope and goodness amid the nightmarish violence. Koontz fans will love it. Agent, Robert Gottlieb at William Morris. 400,000 first printing; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild main selections. (Dec. 28) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.