** spoiler alert ** This book shows both what I love and hate about Koontz. Great premises, but crappy endings.

For the first 70 pages or so he had me hooked. A town suddenly empty of people; Marie Celeste like food still hot on the stoves. A woman and her young sister, alone, with "something" creeping around. So far, so creepy, and I was loving it.

I was still with him when the cops turned up... but when the "creature" turned out to be a huge, almost omnipotent amoeba, he lost me. I stuck with it through to the end, but I had ceased to care about what happened to the characters by then.

A missed opportunity. It could have been so much better.