The Crooked Staircase
Jane Hawk faces the fight of her lifeThe No.1 New York Times bestseller and master of suspense Dean Koontz returns with a blockbuster new thriller featuring rogue FBI agent Jane Hawk. ‘I could be dead tomorrow. Or something worse than dead’Rogue FBI agent Jane Hawk knows she’s living on borrowed time. But as long as she’s breathing, she’ll never cease her one-woman war against the terrifying conspiracy that threatens the freedom – and free will – of millions.Battling the mysterious epidemic of murder-suicides that claimed Jane’s husband has made Jane a wanted fugitive, hunted relentlessly by the secret cabal behind the plot. They are determined to see her dead . . . or make her wish she was.Propelled by her righteous fury, Jane will confront head-on the lethal forces arrayed against her. But nothing can prepare her for the chilling truth that awaits when she descends the crooked staircase to the dark and dreadful place where her long nightmare was born.
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HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
First published in the USA in 2018 by Bantam Books,
an imprint of Random House,
a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2018
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Yolande de Kort/Trevillion Images (scene); Shutterstock.com (woman)
Dean Koontz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Text design by Virginia Norey
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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SOURCE ISBN: 9780008291525
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008291570
Version: 2018-05-10
To Vito and Lynn, with love, for all the laughter
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder â¦
And donât cry, baby, donât cry,
Donât cry
âPAUL SIMON, âThe Boy in the Bubbleâ
Hateful empty Masks, full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out ⦠from their glass eyes with a ghastly affectation of life.
âTHOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
Contents
Loved The Crooked Staircase? Try the latest heart-stopping thrillers from No.1 New York Times bestseller Dean Koontz â¦
About the Author
By Dean Koontz
About the Publisher
At seven oâclock on that night in March, during a thunderless but heavy rain pounding as loud as an orchestra of kettledrums, Sara Holdsteck finally left the offices of Paradise Real Estate, carrying her briefcase in her left hand, open purse slung over her left shoulder, right hand free for a cross-body draw of the gun in the purse. She boarded her Ford Explorer, threw back the dripping hood of her raincoat, and drove home by way of familiar suburban streets on which the foul weather had settled a strangeness, an apocalyptic gloom that matched her mood. Not for the first time in the past two years, she felt as if somewhere ahead of her, reality itself must be eroding, washing away, so that she might come to the crumbling edge of a precipice with nothing beyond but a lightless, bottomless abyss. Silver needles of rain pleated the darkness with mystery and threat. Any vehicle that followed her more than three blocks elicited her suspicion.
