#65 The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

From the Publisher
Timothy Carrier, having a beer after work at his friend’s tavern, enjoys drawing eccentric customers into amusing conversations. But the jittery man who sits next to him tonight has mistaken Tim for someone very different—and passes to him a manila envelope full of cash.

“Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she’s gone.”

The stranger walks out, leaving a photo of the pretty woman marked for death, and her address. But things are about to get worse. In minutes another stranger sits next to Tim. This one is a cold-blooded killer who believes Tim is the man who has hired him.

Thinking fast, Tim says, “I’ve had a change of heart. You get ten thousand—for doing nothing. Call it a no-kill fee.” He keeps the photo and gives the money to the hired killer. And when Tim secretly follows the man out of the tavern, he gets a further shock: the hired killer is a cop.

Suddenly, Tim Carrier, an ordinary guy, is at the center of a mystery of extraordinary proportions, the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer far more powerful than any cop…and as relentless as evil incarnate. But first Tim must discover within himself the capacity for selflessness, endurance, and courage that can turn even an ordinary man into a hero, inner resources that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy.

My Opinion
This was another book in a string of books by Koontz that tends to follow the same path. Reminiscent of ‘The Husband’ this book is about a man, who is unknowingly dragged into a circumstance that he would rahter have no part of but handles brilliantly. Tim Carrier is just another guy having a drink in a friend’s bar when he is approached by a man and mistakenly identified as a hit-man. Then a few moments later as he is trying to digest what is has just happened to him, he is mistakenly identified by the real hit-man as the person who has contacted him about a job. This sets Tim on a path of intrigue and danger that a normal mason would be ill equipped to handle. But then Tim is so much more than he appears to be at first glance.

I like how Koontz introduced us to the main characters with very little information about them, and throughout the book adds a few more details at a time, until finally we see who Tim and Linda really are. I enjoyed the book and really liked the way that everything was tied together in the end.

An enjoyable read, by one of my favorite authors, even if he does seem to have mellowed a bit with age. I enjoyed his earlier books that had elements of supernatural, but these books recently, that are basically thrillers, are okay.