The Face of Fear (1977)

The Face of Fear is a suspense-horror novel by American writer Dean Koontz, first published in 1977. It was originally released under the pseudonym Brian Coffey.

Plot summary

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 they 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 he is wounded by detective Ira Preduski. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Connie and Graham are engaged.

Major characters

Graham Harris

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, particularly Detective Ira Preduski, in trying to find the Butcher: 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 programme, Graham senses that Edna Mowry, the Butcher's tenth victim, is being killed, and then senses that she has been killed. The killer realises that Graham knows to much, and might be able to identify him. He murders security guards and the few other people still working in the "Bowerton Building", a multi storey structure which houses Graham's office, but Graham senses the killer's presence. The armed killer pursues Graham and Connie through the Bowerton; they have no weapons, and their attempts to escape include sometimes scaling the outer walls of the building, before they finally escape 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.

Connie Davis

Connie is Graham Harris's girlfriend and the owner of an antique shop. Thirty-four years old and a brunette, Connie has lived with Graham for eighteen months. "To Connie, there was but one obscenity, and that was the grave". Connie believes that helping and healing Graham is the most important thing in her life, and loves him more than she has anyone else, ever. "She was his (Graham's) doctor and nurse as well as his lover". Connie is chased along with Graham throughout the "Bowerton Building", escaping and fleeing with Graham to his house. Her life is likely saved by Detective Preduski shooting Anthony Prine in self-defense. By the end of the story, she and Graham have decided to get married.

Ira Preduski

Ira is a Manhattan homicide Detective, paired up with Detective Daniel Mulligan. He has brown eyes and a pale complexion, and described as being "quick to take blame for everything". He lived in the south until he was four years old, although his parents weren't born there, and then moved north with his parents. According to Ira himself, he hasn't found "the right woman".

He is present at the tenth and eleventh Butcher murders. When Dr. Enderby suggests to him at the crime scene of Sarah Piper that the Butcher is two people and they are working together, he disagrees with Enderby, saying "I can't see psychopaths working together so smoothly and effectively". Anthony Prine is wounded at Graham Harris's house by Ira, who is shooting in self-defense, likely saving the life of Graham Harris. Ira seems to know at the end of the novel that Graham and Connie plan on getting married.