False Memory Hardcover - 1999

From the publisher

Just when you thought he couldn't top himself, Dean Koontz has done it again with a novel that will chill you to the bone and demonstrate why he has earned the distinction "America's most popular suspense novelist" ("Rolling Stone"). A Dean Koontz novel is not just an unforgettable read--it is a life-changing experience. As anyone who has ever read one of his novels knows, he creates atmospheric settings, believable characters, and all-too-plausible situations through which he explores the terror that we all suspect lurks just out of sight in our ordinary lives. In this unforgettable novel he weaves a tale of madness, suspense, love, and terror from a startling and true-life psychological condition so close to home it will stun even his most seasoned readers: autophobia--fear of oneself.
Martie Rhodes is a young wife, a successful video game designer, and a compassionate woman who takes her agoraphobic friend, Susan, to therapy sessions. Susan is so afraid of leaving her apartment that even these trips to the doctor's office become ordeals for both women--but with each trip a deeper emotional bond forms between them. Then one morning Martie experiences a sudden and inexplicable fear of her own, a fleeting but disquieting terror of...her own shadow. The episode is over so quickly it leaves her shaken but amused. The amusement is short-lived. For as she is about to check her makeup, she realizes that she is terrified to look in the mirror and confront the reflection of her own face.
As the episodes of this traumatic condition-- autophobia--build, the lives of Martie and her husband, Dustin, change drastically. Desperate to discover the reasons for his wife's sudden andseemingly inevitable descent into mental chaos, Dusty takes Martie to the renowned therapist who has been treating Susan, and tries to reconstructhe events of recent months in a frantic search for clues. As he comes closer to the shocking truth, Dusty finds himself afflicted with a condition even more bizarre and fearsome than Martie's. No fan of Dean Koontz or of classic psychological suspense will want to miss this extraordinary novel of the human mind's capacity to torment-- and destroy--itself. In False Memory, Dean Koontz has created a novel that will stay in your memory long after the final page is turned-- a story not only of gripping fear but also of the power of love and friendship. Once more Koontz reveals why he has, as "People" put it, the "power to scare the daylights out of us."

Then one morning Martie experiences a sudden fear of her own, a brief but disquieting terror of...her shadow. The episode is over so quickly, it leaves her shaken but amused. Then, as she is about to check her makeup, she realizes she is terrified to look in the mirror and confront her own face.
As the episodes of this traumatic condition--autophobia--build, the lives of Martie and her husband, Dustin, change drastically. Frantic to discover the trigger for her descent into hell, Dustin begins to look into the background of a respected therapist. As he comes closer to the truth about this strange and troubled "healer," Dustin finds himself afflicted with a condition even more bizarre and terrifying than Martie's. No fan of psychological suspense will want to miss this extraordinary novel of the human mind's capacity to torment--and destroy. Dean Koontz once more reveals why he has, as "People" put it, the "power to scare the daylights out of us."