I admit it.  This one was one of the more painful Koontz books for me to get through.  I sped read through the last 200 pages  just to get through it because it wasn’t holding my attention. It wasn’t as intense as I would have liked, despite others thinking this was one of Koontz’s best.

It’s the story of a girl named Chyna who plans to spend the weekend with her college roommate with the roommate’s family on a California vineyard, only to have a serial killer named Edgler Foreman Vess break in and kill everyone except Chyna that night.  Unbeknownst to Vess, Chyna sneaks aboard his RV and leaves the vineyard with him. Vess stops at a gas station and kills the attendants. Chyna has the chance to escape, but when she learns that Vess is holding a young girl hostage she sets off after him with intentions of saving the girl.  Let the cat and mouse games begin!

The “intensity” comes from the long drawn out somewhat terrifying scenes of Chyna hiding from Vess in attempts to go unnoticed and to survive, however for me those scenes were a bit too long at times.  In fact, there’s practically no dialogue in the story for the first 200 pages (other than Chyna talking with her friends or Vess talking to the gas station attendants). It’s all inner dialogue as Koontz switches back and forth between Chyna and Vess pushing the story along.

While Vess is an interesting and disturbing character, I’ve read so many other “serial killer” stories that I found to be much better.  Thomas Harris’s “Silence of the Lambs” immediatelycomes to mind, along with even Koontz’s latest “What the Night Knows.”  I connected with the characters much more than I did with Intensity, and found myself emotionally engaged and frightened at times for what came next. With “Intensity,” I just didn’t care at all and while the intense anticipation should drive a story, it only slowed it down for me here.

I’m definitely enjoying Koontz’s later writing now that I’ve read two of his older books, so because of this, I may be a bit more selective with which of his older books I choose to visit.