When Dylan O'Conner, together with his autistic brother, Shepherd, pulls into a motel off the interstate highway, all he wants is a good night's sleep. Yet within the hour he finds himself bound, gagged and being injected with a mysterious fluid by a lunatic doctor, who claims Dylan will be the carrier of 'his life's work'. Comedian Jillian Jackson is midway through a tour of seedy venues, accompanied by her pet pot-plant Fred. But her plans for stardom are dramatically altered when she too falls victim to the eccentric scientist. The doctor warns his victims that he is being pursued and that they too are now targets. If they are caught, they will be killed. Both are sceptical. Before long, they are beginning to wonder if the lunatic doctor wasn't quite so mad after all . . .
Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). When he was a senior in college, Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since.
His first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband's writing career. Dean and Gerda Koontz along with their dog, Trixie, live in southern California.
His books are published in 38 languages, a figure that currently increases more than 17 million copies per year.
