The Door to December by Dean Koontz

Title:  The Door to December
Author:  Dean Koontz
Pages:  510
Genre:  Horror / Thriller
Publisher:  Signet, 1994
Series:  Stand Alone

"It's like...the window to yesterday."

Synopsis:  Little Melanie had been kidnapped when she was only three.  She was nine when she was found wandering the L.A. streets, with blank eyes.  What had become of her in all those years of darkness...and what was the terrible secret, clutching at her soul, that she dared not even whisper?

Her loving mother and the police desperately hunted for the answer.  they needed Melanie to get to the bottom of the most savage scene of carnage the city had ever seen.  And they would do anything to save her from whatever dreadful force or thing had invaded her young life.  But first they would have to save themselves from a rising tide of terror....and from an icy evil howling through.......THE DOOR TO DECEMBER.

Review:  This was a fast paced, horror-filled trip, taking you to the depths of what humans will do to one another to get what they want.  It forces you to ask yourself -- do you believe in psychic abilities and if you do, do you really know what powers you are tapping into?

Melanie's mother Laura, who hasn't seen her daughter in 6 years, is desperate to know what her ex-husband has done to their child.  He was a research scientist who was obsessed with the occult.  It becomes increasingly obvious as the novel proceeds that he used his young daughter as the subject of a long and painful experiment.

But now, all the people who were directly involved in the experiment are being killed brutally.  It seems no one, including Melanie, is safe from the nameless presence that came from beyond the door.

I think this is my favorite of the books that this author has written.  He's written quite a few good books (and some not-so-good ones too), but this one is just impossible to put down and so scary.  I loved it!

Rating:  9 / 10