The new fast-moving thriller from Dean Koontz is the story of aninnocent man forced by a serial killer to choose who will be murderednext. William Wiles is an easygoing thirty-something, a bartender wholives a quiet life alone until a serial killer singles him out - not tokill him, but to force him to decide who the next victim will be. On hisSUV Billy finds the first note: 'If you don't take this note to thepolice and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blonde schoolteacher.If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderlywoman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choiceis yours.' Billy pays an informal visit to an acquaintance, Lanny Olson,who is a policeman, and who thinks the note is a prank. Theschoolteacher dies. The next note reverses the choices: if Billy takesthe note to the police, a mother of two young children will die. If hedoesn't, an unmarried man who won't be much missed will die. Lanny hasto take this note seriously but the deadline runs out before he candecide how to make his involvement official. Billy doesn't hear from himagain because Lanny himself, unmarried, who will not be much missed,has become the next victim. There will be more communications from thekiller, more hideous choices, with ever tighter decision times, and witheach choice Billy is drawn deeper into an accelerating nightmare, whichsteadily becomes more personal, more confrontational, until he isisolated, with no one to turn to and no one to rely on but himself.Finally he must risk everything to save the intended victims .