From the Book: Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch'. Who wouldn't want to know why Harry's lunch had to include shooting someone...especially if the service had ever made you ever want to do that? Harry is a cop, and the man he stops his lunch to shoot, with the help of his partner, Connie Gulliver, is a lunatic who interrupted their lunch by shooting the establishment to smithereens. I have to admit that it was quite a start to the story, and it was also the start to this authors' many red herrings, because the crazy was just that...crazy. Then there is the guy that Harry and Connie take on later...Bryan Drackman, who becomes fixated on the cops when he's drawn to the restaurant shooting. Bryan, like most serial killers, believes that he has been endowed "godlike" powers; but we find there is SO much more to Bryan since...he really has been. He was doomed to this future even before birth by radiation and drugs, and this is what Bryan believes has turned him into a sociopath who can conjure up any entity he wants...especially his sometimes "friend and companion...Ticktock,'' a giant who is now stalking Harry, Connie, and the others, including a dog, (who I absolutely loved), who makes understandable audible narrations like "piece of paper. candy wrapper. smells good'', " better pee here". The dog is charming...and just about the only character in this story that you would give that moniker to. Ticktock warns Harry & the rest that they will all die at dawn, and it's only late into the night that they learn that Bryan has the power to stop time, which naturally causes a jaw- dropping moment for the cops but they manage to flee through a frozen world with "Ticktock" close behind them. Bryan, the cops now know, must sleep after his time-stopping escapades...which may be another "bad" thing for Harry and company. The story becomes a bit on the "preachy" side about social decay...but the action never slows down. I have to give any author who can produce and publish anything with this much over-the-top imagination...something that actually makes adult people sit for hours glued to the pages to see how it all concludes...5 or more stars. Well done Dean Koontz! ( )

I'm a big fan of fiction and this book was an easy read that got me started back into regular reading. ( )

Dean Koontz is always a winner with me! Great characters, suspense, romance. Highly recommended.

FROM AMAZON: Harry Lyon is a rational man, a cop who refuses to let his job harden his soul. His partner urges him to surrender to the chaos of life. But Harry believes in order and reason. Then one fateful day, he's forced to shoot a man—and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes utters the haunting words that challenge Harry Lyon’s sanity...

“Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...” ( )

this is the first Dean Koontz book i read and i have to say i enjoyed.

the characters were pretty good and the way how he wrote them into a situation and to see how they try to over come those challenges was fun. the villain is interesting and has a crazy power and his dialog was very edgy which makes sense given he is a murderer after all.

i only have 2 complaints being there is a scene at the begging where the 2 main characters are chasing down a guy who loves his Elvis Presley and i found it dragged on a little to long. also a part of the ending i found a little anti climatic. but other wise i like this book quite a bit and it was easy to read through. i would not mind reading more koontz books as there is a few that interest me

one thing that surprised me and this is not a spoiler is that there is a part of this book that did creep me out. this book had a part with spiders and the way it described them made me cringe. if your like me and are afraid of them then just be warned but if not then that is not gonna be an issue. this is not a flaw just something to keep in mind before reading as it came out of no where for me. ( )

Eh, this is the book that the last one I read, Fallen, was trying to be, and to be honest, this one wasn’t even that great. Which I guess is pretty bad for Fallen...anyway, this one had its moments, the plot made sense, for the most part, but there was also stuff missing (like why was Ticktock picking on a homeless guy and a single mother and child). It wasn’t bad, the writing was good, but the plot holes hurt it for me, and well, it was kinda weird reading from a dogs point of view... ( )