Once Chyna slips inside, looking for Ariel, she finds herself looped in ribbons of Koontz's Supertacky Flypaper.Ī suspense masterpiece that leaves its competitors buried in dust. Thus, still alone, she steals a Honda and trails Vess, who drives up into Oregon where he has a spotlessly clean two-story log cabin in a deep woods, some high-tech computer equipment-and Ariel. Vess, Chyna now knows, has 16-yard-old Ariel imprisoned in his home. Worse, Chyna is herself a semiprisoner, escaping unseen only when Vess stops at a gas station, kills the attendants, and takes Polaroids of their corpses. But Laura is dead, as is a young hitchhiker hung by manacles in a closet with his eyes sewn shut and lips closed with two buttons. Unbeknownst to Vess, Chyna, in hiding, witnesses much of this, and, armed only with a butcher knife, sneaks into the trailer hoping to save Laura. Vess murders Laura's parents, her brother and sister-in-law, then makes off with Laura in his big motor home. The story: Chyna Sheperd, a psychology grad in her late 20s, visits her close friend Laura Templeton's family in Napa Valley on the very night that the country house is invaded by 'homicidal adventurer' and sensation freak Edgler (pronounced Edge-ler) Foreman Vess.

Demanding much of itself, Koontz's style bleaches out genre cliches and hackneyed dialogue while also showing a genius for detail and a daunting mastery of motors, tools, hinges, and housewares arcana. Simple as a snaplock, the story relentlessly lives up to its title-even the flashbacks rise above filler as they allow slight easings before the next plot lurch. as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgar Foreman Vess intensifies.Written with Krazy-Glu, Koontz's 27th book is his most gripping chiller yet. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl. At first her sole aim is to get out alive - until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.Ĭhyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. A self-proclaimed 'homicidal adventurer,' Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with intensity. A murderous sociopath, Edger Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside.

Past midnight, Chyna Shepherd, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family.

Intensity by Dean Koontz