Product Description

It's a year since Tina Evans lost her little boy Danny in a tragic accident, a year since she began the painful process of trying to rebuild her life. Then a shattering message appears on the blackboard in Danny’s old room: NOT DEAD
 
Is it someone’s idea of a grim joke? Or the tangible evidence of her tormented unconscious? Or something…more? The search for an answer, the search for Danny, demands a courage and endurance beyond any that Tina thought she possessed. Only her love for her son, her love for the one man who believes her, drives her on, through the neon clamour of Las Vegas nightlife, the sun-scorched desert, and the frozen mountains of the High Sierra. People die, coldly, brutally, as a buried truth struggles to surface. A truth so incredible, so frightening, so dangerous that its secret must be kept at the price of any life – any man, any woman…any child.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69334 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Dean Koontz was born into a very poor family and learned early on to escape into fiction. He lives in southern California with his wife, Gerda and a vivid imagination.

Customer Reviews

The eyes to all your hidden fears.............
Naturally, Tina wants to believe her son did not really die. But when this message appears 'NOT DEAD', you begin to share the intense psychological struggle between hope for the impossible and genuine, heartchilling fear the impossible may have become possible; the innate and instinct rejection of what shouldn't be, but what you desperately want to be. This is the story of what can happen when you let your mind open just a fraction. Not only do the oddest things seep in, the most awful things become real....... This book is da bomb. You need to be ready to contend with Koontz and his alarming but compelling narrative - but you will be glad you did.

Classic Koontz
Tina Evans is a Las Vegas choreographer who is struggling to come to terms with the death of her only son, Danny. More than a year after his death, on a school trip, she begins to receive messages such as 'NOT DEAD' scrawled on various surfaces. And other supernatural signs that Danny may be alive.

Who is sending the messages? If he is not dead where is he? Why would his school lie? And, if he is sending her these messages, how?

Tina enlists Elliot Stykers' help in finding out the truth. What follows is the basic trust no one scenario done with Koontz's expertise

One of his poorest.
Im a massive fan of Dean Koontz, but I'm afraid I have to admit that this is a poor offering from the master.

Koontz has always worked in two genres; Horror and Thriller, often blending the two styles to create stories that both set your pulse racing, and have you checking under the bed before lights-out. Unfortunately, rather than blending, the thriller and supernatural elements in this story CLASH. It might have been a good novel if Koontz had wrote it entirely as a thriller, for the beginning is very good (especially when the assassins are set loose), but the story becomes obsurd when the supernatural tilt is added. You feel how awkward the new direction feels when it arrives, as if even the characters themselves are reluctant to go with the flow - after all they don't appear to have been built for the supernatural genre. The characters reasoning becomes quite unlikely and forced, as they try to incorperate the latest strange developments in the story.

Not good, I'm afraid, despite a promising start. For a good Koontz horror, try The Taking. For a good Koontz thriller, try The Good Guy. For a good Koontz horror/thriller crossover, try Watchers.

But for heavens sake, try to avoid this.