though it was kind of strange, with how the two main characters took to eachother immediately, it was a good book

This is a good book to read to pass the time. I finished it in a day, and enjoyed it. There is no great significance in it, but it's a good book if you enjoy fast-paced thrillers.

I used to read a lot of Dean Koontz in junior high and High School. I haven't read his stuff in a while, and reading The Good Guy makes me wonder if I’d like all those book less if I went back and read them now. I suspect I would.

Tim sits in a bar making small talk. Another man walks in, suspects Tim’s the hired killer he’s looking for, and hires him to murder someone. Later the actual killer walks in, assumes Tim is the one hiring him, and tries to set up the murder.

Yeah, it just gets worse from there. Do people really set up a murder without verifying they are talking to an actual hitman? Do people really make these deals out in the open. The ridiculous premise leads to a ridiculous plot full of bad dialogue and boring characters. Most of the plot ideas seem to hang on so much happening by chance. None of these people in real life would have ever seen each other again. I won’t be trying another one of his books for a while. It makes me wonder how many of those stories I loved as a teenager are just junk?

Couldn't have enjoyed this book more.

One of the things I loved most was Koontz's technique of "delaying backstory" where we don't find out the histories of our main characters until very late in the book. He uses it to tease, to maintain tension, but also to keep us immersed in the conundrums unfolding now.

This is a must-read!

Dean Koontz has a distinctive style in the thriller genre, and I have always liked it. I haven’t read a book by him in a while, and realized that it’s been long enough that a good half-dozen new ones are available. Of them all, this one sounded the most intriguing, so I tried it first, and I am very glad I did. This is trademark Dean Koontz — a page-turner from the very first paragraph. I could not put this book down, and read the whole thing in three days despite being on vacation and visiting relatives.

The book’s strength, as with many of Koontz’s, resides in a tight, twisty-turny plot, and in very well drawn characters. The villain is suitably threatening, and the two main characters — Linda and Tim — are wonderfully drawn. Koontz will have you caring about them both from the get-go, and you will be hard-pressed to put this book down without making sure they are both safe.

If you have never tried a Dean Koontz book, this is as good as it gets, and a reasonable one to get you started. If you have read Koontz and you like his style, you will love this one. It is up there with False Memory, Watchers, and Lightning as one of my all-time favorites.

A

This felt more like a John Sandford book than one by Dean Koontz. A cat-and-mouse thriller where the relentless killer may have met his match in Tim Carrier. While I enjoyed the story, the buildup behind Tim's mysterious past and his mother's admonition to, "Just be you," felt cheesy and anticlimatic when the truth was finally known.