False Memory: A thriller that plays terrifying tricks with you...

Imagine being scared of your own shadow... False Memory is a chilling thriller of shadows, darkness and the mind. Perfect for fans of Stephen King and Richard Laymon.'Koontz redefines suspense' - The Times Martie Rhodes, a happily married, successful video games designer, takes an agoraphobic friend to therapy sessions twice a week. Each trip is a grim ordeal, but the experience has brought the two friends even closer together.Then, one morning, Martie experiences a brief, irrational but disquieting fear of... her shadow. When autophobia - one of the rarest and most intriguing phobias known to psychology - is diagnosed, suddenly, radically, her life changes, and her future looks dark. Martie's husband, Dusty, loves her profoundly, and is desperate to understand the cause of her autophobia. But as he comes closer to the terrible truth, Dusty himself starts showing signs of a psychological disorder even more frightening than that afflicting Martie...What readers are saying about False Memory: 'False Memory is an intense plot painted with achingly real characters''With this book the 'master of our darkest dreams' takes a fuller, more (in)human dimension. False Memory is a literary jewel''The best book I've ever read'

Amazon.com Review

Not a continuation of the Moonlight Bay series (Seize the Night and Fear Nothing) as many fans were expecting, False Memory is nonetheless just as powerful and compulsive as anything Koontz has written before. Martie Rhodes is a successful young computer games designer with a loving husband, Dusty, and a seemingly normal life. Her best friend, Susan, however, suffers from agoraphobia, or a fear of open spaces, and relies on Martie to take her to weekly therapy sessions. Suddenly and inexplicably, Martie herself begins exhibiting worrying signs of a mental disorder, fearing herself capable of inflicting great harm on her loved ones. At the same time, Dusty's brother Skeet also succumbs to irrational mental behavior and tries to throw himself from a roof. It soon becomes clear that these four characters are involved in something much more than a sinister coincidence. Koontz's great skill, as he demonstrates so well in this novel, is creating believable characters and thrusting them into seemingly impossible but--for the period of the story--completely plausible situations. The plot is as carefully layered as the most intricate orchestral compositions, and Koontz conducts the proceedings with almost unbearable tension. One of his greatest abilities as a writer, however, is tapping into the dark paranoia of society. As we approach the Millennium, and an age in which we are becoming increasingly desensitized to death and violence, Martie's fear of herself, known as autophobia, seems a terrifying warning that soon the only thing we will have left to fear is ourselves. Deeper meanings aside, this is easily one of his best thrillers. The prose moves at a breakneck speed, and the denouement will leave you with a pounding heart and chills up and down your spine. Koontz delivers exciting, boundary-breaking fiction better than anyone else in the game, and False Memory (though at times shocking and disturbing) is a perfect example of a master author in top form. --Jonathan Weir, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal

Koontz's latest offering centers around evil and powerful psychiatrist Dr. Mark Ahriman, who has developed an effective procedure for "brainwashing" his clients that he uses for fun and profit. Husband and wife Dusty and Martie Rhodes, themselves among the victims of the drug-and- hypnosis-based method, become aware slowly, through a series of accidents, of the doctor's malevolent influence. They struggle, sometimes against themselves, to discredit and defeat him. Koontz's legion of fans will recognize again his skill at making the improbable seem possible, and even likely. Actor Stephen Lang reads with skill, especially the chilling inner and outer voice of the psychopathic doctor. Recommended for purchase as demand warrants.AKristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

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 repairingbecause 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 aboutditto 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 clichs of expression while nonetheless applying an air pump to the suspense: an MO that keeps his yearly 17-million book sales afloat. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap

On the heels of his critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Fear Nothing and Seize the Night, "America's most popular suspense novelist"* will stun readers with a deeply sinister and endlessly surprising tale of a rare and terrifying phobia: autophobia - fear of oneself.Martie Rhodes is a young wife (happily married to Dustin for three years), a video game designer, and a compassionate woman who takes her agoraphobic friend Carol to therapy sessions. Carol is so afraid of leaving her apartment that the trips are grim ordeals for both women - but bonding experiences as well. Then one morning Martie experiences a sudden fear of her own, a brief but disquieting terror of...her shadow. The episode it over quickly. It leaves her shaken but amused. Then, as she is about to check her makeup, she realizes she is terrified to look in the mirror and confront her own face.As the episodes of this traumatic condition - autophobia - build, the lives of Martie and her husband change drastically. Frantic to discover the trigger for her descent into hell, Dustin begins to look into the background of a respected therapist. As he comes closer to the truth about this strange and troubled "healer," Dustin finds himself afflicted with a condition even more bizarre and terrifying than Martie's.No fan of psychological suspense will want to miss this extraordinary novel of the human mind's capacity to torment - and destroy. Dean Koontz once more reveals why he has, as People put it, the "power to scare the daylights out of us."

From the Back Cover

*Rolling Stone

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On that Tuesday in January, when her life changed forever, Martine Rhodes woke with a headache, developed a sour stomach after washing down two aspirin with grapefruit juice, guaranteed herself an epic bad-hair day by mistakenly using Dustin's shampoo instead of her own, broke a fingernail, burnt her toast, discovered ants swarming through the cabinet under the kitchen sink, eradicated the pests by firing a spray can of insecticide as ferociously as Sigourney Weaver wielded a flamethrower in one of those old extraterrestrial-bug movies, cleaned up the resultant carnage with paper towels, hummed Bach's Requiem as she solemnly consigned the tiny bodies to the trash can, and took a telephone call from her mother, Sabrina, who still prayed for the collapse of Martie's marriage three years after the wedding. Throughout, she remained upbeat--even enthusiastic--about the day ahead, because from her late father, Robert "Smilin' Bob" Woodhouse, she had inherited an optimistic nature, formidable coping skills, and a deep love of life in addition to blue eyes, ink-black hair, and ugly toes.Thanks, Daddy.After convincing her ever hopeful mother that the Rhodes marriage remained happy, Martie slipped into a leather jacket and took her golden retriever, Valet, on his morning walk. Step by step, her headache faded.Along the whetstone of clear eastern sky, the sun sharpened scalpels of light. Out of the west, however, a cool onshore breeze pushed malignant masses of dark clouds.The dog regarded the heavens with concern, sniffed the air warily, and pricked his pendant ears at the hiss-clatter of palm fronds stirred by the wind. Clearly, Valet knew a storm was coming.He was a gentle, playful dog. Loud noises frightened him, however, as though he had been a soldier in a former life and was haunted by memories of battlefields blasted by cannon fire.Fortunately for him, rotten weather in southern California was seldom accompanied by thunder. Usually, rain fell unannounced, hissing on the streets, whispering through the foliage, and these were sounds that even Valet found soothing.Most mornings, Martie walked the dog for an hour, along the narrow tree-lined streets of Corona Del Mar, but she had a special obligation every Tuesday and Thursday that limited their excursion to fifteen minutes on those days. Valet seemed to have a calendar in his furry head, because on their Tuesday and Thursday expeditions, he never dawdled, finishing his toilet close to home.This morning, only one block from their house, on the grassy sward between the sidewalk and the curb, the pooch looked around shyly, discreetly lifted his right leg, and as usual made water as though embarrassed by the lack of privacy.Less than a block farther, he was preparing to conclude the second half of his morning business when a passing garbage truck backfired, startling him. He huddled behind a queen palm, peering cautiously around one side of the tree bole and then around the other, convinced that the terrifying vehicle would reappear."No problem," Martie assured him. "The big bad truck is gone. Everything's fine. This is now a safe-to-poop zone."Valet was unconvinced. He remained wary.Martie was blessed with Smilin' Bob's patience, too, especially when dealing with Valet, whom she loved almost as much as she might have loved a child if she'd had one. He was sweet-tempered and beautiful: light gold, with gold-and-white feathering on his legs, soft snow-white flags on his butt, and a lush tail.Of course, when the dog was in a doing-business squat, like now, Martie never looked at him, because he was as self-conscious as a nun in a topless bar. While waiting, she softly sang Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," which always relaxed him.As she began the second verse, a sudden chill climbed the ladder of her spine, causing her to fall silent. She was not a woman given to premonitions, but as the icy quiver ascended to the back of her neck, she was overcome by a sense of impending danger.Turning, she half expected to see an approaching assailant or a hurtling car. Instead, she was alone on this quiet residential street.Nothing rushed toward her with lethal purpose. The only moving things were those harried by the wind. Trees and shrubs shivered. A few crisp brown leaves skittered along the pavement. Garlands of tinsel and Christmas lights, from the recent holiday, rustled and rattled under the eaves of a nearby house.Still uneasy, but feeling foolish, Martie let out the breath that she'd been holding. When the exhalation whistled between her teeth, she realized that her jaws were clenched.She was probably still spooked from the dream that awakened her after midnight, the same one she'd had on a few other recent nights. The man made of dead, rotting leaves, a nightmare figure. Whirling, raging.Then her gaze dropped to her elongated shadow, which stretched across the close-cropped grass, draped the curb, and folded onto the cracked concrete pavement. Inexplicably, her uneasiness swelled into alarm.She took one step backward, then a second, and of course her shadow moved with her. Only as she retreated a third step did she realize that this very silhouette was what frightened her.Ridiculous. More absurd than her dream. Yet something in her shadow was not right: a jagged distortion, a menacing quality.Her heart knocked as hard as a fist on a door.In the severe angle of the morning sun, the houses and trees cast distorted images, too, but she saw nothing fearsome in their stretched and buckled shadows--only in her own.She recognized the absurdity of her fear, but this awareness did not diminish her anxiety. Terror courted her, and she stood hand in hand with panic.The shadow seemed to throb with the thick slow beat of its own heart. Staring at it, she was overcome with dread.Martie closed her eyes and tried to get control of herself.For a moment, she felt so light that the wind seemed strong enough to sweep her up and carry her inland with the relentlessly advancing clouds, toward the steadily shrinking band of cold blue sky. As she drew a series of deep breaths, however, weight gradually returned to her.When she dared to look again at her shadow, she no longer sensed anything unusual about it. She let out a sigh of relief.Her heart continued to pound, powered not by irrational terror anymore, but by an understandable concern as to the cause of this peculiar episode. She'd never previously experienced such a thing.Head cocked quizzically, Valet was staring at her.She had dropped his leash.Her hands were damp with sweat. She blotted her palms on her blue jeans.When she realized that the dog had finished his toilet, Martie slipped her right hand into a plastic pet-cleanup bag, using it as a glove. Being a good neighbor, she neatly collected Valet's gift, turned the bright blue bag inside out, twisted it shut, and tied a double knot in the neck.The retriever watched her sheepishly."If you ever doubt my love, baby boy," Martie said, "remember I do this every day."Valet looked grateful. Or perhaps only relieved.Performance of this familiar, humble task restored her mental balance. The little blue bag and its warm contents anchored her to reality. The weird incident remained troubling, intriguing, but it no longer frightened her.From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives with his wife, Gerda, and the enduring spirit of their golden retriever, Trixie, in southern California.

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