The Face of Fear
First edition
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| Author | Dean Koontz (as Brian Coffey) |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Suspense, Horror novel |
| Publisher | Bobbs-Merrill Company |
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Publication date
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1977 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 232 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 22779029 |
The Face of Fear is a novel by best-selling author Dean Koontz, first published in 1977. It was originally released under the pseudonym Brian Coffey.
Graham Harris was once one of the world's foremost mountain climbers, until a fall five years earlier left him with a lame leg, a fear of heights...and a frightening psychic ability in which he can see murders as they are happening. Harris lives in New York City, where a murderous madman known as the Butcher has been mutilating young women. While he is giving an interview on live television one night, Graham senses the Butcher claiming another victim. When the madman realizes that Graham poses a threat to him he formulates a plan to kill the clairvoyant. While working late one night in his office building, Graham senses that the Butcher is coming to his floor aboard an elevator. With his girlfriend Connie at his side, Graham begins a long night of playing hide and seek to try to avoid the psychopath's grip. During which, Connie and Graham gradually run out of places to hide, and are eventually faced with a horrific ultimatum. Either stay and take their chances with the Butcher, or scale the face of the building in the midst of a blizzard. Graham is eventually talked into facing his fear with the latter, with the Butcher shooting at them all the while. Eventually, the Butcher is violently killed in an incident involving a piece of machinery. Graham and Connie escape, but soon meet up with Anthony Prine, who is the other half of the Butcher. (It is revealed that he and Bollinger had a quasi-Leopold and Loeb relationship.) Prine confronts them, but is killed by detective Ira Preduski. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Connie and Graham are engaged.
Graham has blue eyes, is thirty-eight years old, stands five feet eleven inches tall, and has "thick reddish-blond hair". He feels affection for Connie Davis, his girlfriend. His father, a successful publisher, died when Graham was a year old, and left him a trust fund. Graham took his stepfather (Evan Harris)'s last name when his mother, a cocktail waitress, was married to the man. Five years before the events of the book, Graham fell on Mount Everest, and his injuries included sixteen broken bones and internal injuries: up to current times, he has made three more attempts to climb Everest and has failed each time. He is the publisher of two mountain climbing magazines. Graham is a clairvoyant who has been helping the police in trying to find the Butcher, particularly Detective Ira Preduski: Graham feels that he himself has "a responsibility to develop and interpret his psychic talent". While being interviewed on Manhattan at Midnight by Anthony Prine, a two-hour interview program, Graham senses that Edna Mowry, the Butcher's tenth victim, is being killed, and then senses that she has been killed. He and Connie are chased through the "Bowerton Building", including sometimes scaling the sides of the building, before escaping the clutches of Frank Bollinger. After Bollinger is killed, they head back to Graham's house, where they are confronted by Ira Preduski and Anthony Prine (who none of them know is one half of the Butcher), surviving Prine's assault mostly due to Preduski shooting Prine in self-defense. By the end of the story, he and Connie have decided to get married.
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