Dean Koontz is one of my favorite horror/sci fi writers. In the past, his books have been very easy to read and the stories believable enough to fall in love with the book.  
 
I was given The House of Thunder as a gift and eagerly began reading over a rainy weekend. Even though, the book jacket says that is was written by Dean Koontz, this book seemed to lack Dean's usual flair.  
 
The Beginning  
The story begins with a young woman-Susan-awakening in a hospital bed. She has been in a coma for so long that she does not remember her name, her job, or what caused her to be in the hospital in the first place. It is up to the dr. to tell her a little about herself; that she was a physicist at a drug company. With the dr's help, Susan begins remembering bits and pieces about her past. She does not remember the car accident that has placed her in the hospital, though.  
 
Although Susan can not remember important details like what her job was like, or the sound of her boss's voice, she does remember one important fact that carries through the whole book. Susan remembers the fraternity brothers who were responsible for her fiance's hazing death-and their revengeful plan to get her back.Susan was a key witness in getting one of the brothers sent to prison.  
 
The Middle  
In the middle section of the book, Susan begins to believe that two of the frat brothers are trying to kill her. She sees two orderlies who look and act like the frat boys. She tries to convince the Dr., that the orderlies are trying to kill her, after some questioning of the orderlies, it is stated that they are not trying to kill her. Susan becomes extremely afraid of the orderlies due to thier unique likeness to the frat boys and the malicious pinches, etc that they give her. At this time, the dr and nurse believe that Susan is having a mental setback because she appears to be schizophrenic in her 'unjust' fear of these two orderlies.  
 
The Ending  
At the end, Susan finds out that she is part of a Communist plot created by the KGB. The hospital and town where she is at does not exist, it is in fact just a storage facility that has been created to resemble an hospital/town. The KGB has researched Susan's life, that is how they knew what her fears were, and used these fears against her.  
 
I feel that this book was very unrealistic due to the fact that Susan was a physist, yet she was not a spy and I have no idea why the KGB would be that interested in her. If Dean had continued with the same storyline that was introduced in the beginning and the middle, the book would have been much easier to read and believe. Instead, he took a perfectly good story, slapped on a fancy ending-that did not go at all with the storyline and called it a book.  
 
I am glad this book was a gift, because I would have been disappointed if I had purchased it 
