Your Heart Belongs to Me

After the sophistication and ingenuity of such recent Hitchcockian thrillers as The Husband and The Good Guy , bestseller Koontz stumbles in this pallid effort. Ryan Kelly, a 34-year-old Internet entrepreneur, has it all, including an attractive journalist girlfriend he wants to marry, Samantha Reach, and a house in a gated community in Newport Coast, Calif. Harsh reality intrudes when he learns he has a serious heart defect and must get a transplant. Fortunately, a compatible donor turns up in time, but then someone launches a reign of psychological terror that leaves Ryan suspicious of Samantha and his longtime servants. The ultimate plot payoff is unworthy of this gifted author, as are patches of ponderous prose (“With the moon still tethered to the eastern horizon but straining higher, with the giant pepper tree occluding most of the eternally receding stars, the time to talk of death had come”). Koontz fans can only hope for a return to form next time. (Nov. 25)