by Wendy Bull

Created on: April 21, 2008

Tim Carrier lives a peaceful life. By day he is a stone mason and a good one at that, by night he sits quietly on the end bar stool in his friend's tavern, having a couple of beers and remaining anonymous. He likes it this way. He tells himself he is not lonely and does not need anyone else in his life. The fact that he is a huge, monster of a man, although a gentle giant, doesn't help his cause.

So when a strange man comes into the bar and gives him an envelope full of cash saying "you get the rest when she's dead", Tim just doesn't react quickly enough to relay to the other man that he is not who he thinks he is. Matters are worsened a few minutes later when the real killer arrives and thinks Tim is the "hirer". Desperately trying to stop the potential killing of this woman, Tim offers the man the money "not" to kill her.

He just doesn't realise that Krait, the killer, is persistent and actually takes pride in his work. A game of cat and mouse is on as Tim tries to save Linda Paquette, the mark, and Krait ruthlessly chases them down.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story of pursuit. It was non-stop and everything I read in each chapter was thrilling and interesting. I never once read a chapter or even a paragraph that I thought was mamby pamby, as Koontz can sometimes draw out in me. There were no long winded descriptions of how the sun rose over the mountains or any other pretty scene setting like this. It was cold hard thriller writing and kept me absorbed from start to finish.

I loved the character of Tim. He made me feel exceptionally safe when reading about him and I was grateful that Linda was with him and Tim had decided to try and save her from Krait. He is a massive man and in a lot of ways in the physical description we get and for physical similarities only he kept reminding me of Blaze or John Coffey (the huge characters from Stephen King's books) but he was certainly not slow in the brain area like Blaze or Coffey, and was brilliantly clever in his actions to get away from Krait. It was hard to accept that he wasn't simple in the beginning as it is such a stereotype in the books I read, but after a few chapters I settled in with Tim's character and found my feet.

Krait on the other hand was easy to accept right from the start. A total nutter! He really is shown to be a cold calculated and very capable killer. We are shown through chapters dedicated to Krait, things that have happened in the past with his victims. These are revealed through Krait's thoughts

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