I will begin my discussion if False Memory with a few general comments. As I understand it, Dean Koontz is considered Stephen King's primary rival for the title of master of horror. There are definite differences between them. King's horror stories are full of grossout material about blood, guts, rotting corpses and the like. Koontz is more sparing on the physical side of horror, focusing instead of mental horrors that take place entirely on the inside. King equates horror with the supernatural on the theory (I assume) that it can't truly horrify if it is bound by the same laws of physics that we are. Koontz generally avoids the supernatural and prefers purportedly scientific explanations. I will add, though, that the basic premise in False Memory is no more plausible than Stephen King's stories of the supernatural. Koontz also has a gift for description and bringing scenes to life, not just in physical detail, but in the mood and atmosphere and emotional impression they create. And his ability to create stomach clenching, heart-pounding terror with absolutely nothing outwardly to justify it is extraordinary.
Now, on to the story. False Memory is about Dusty and Martie Rhodes, a Los Angels couple in their late 20's with a dog (golden retriever named Valet) but no children. Since it is not clear from the names, Dusty (short for Dustin) is the husband, a painting contractor with a three employees. Martie (short for Martine) is a freelance video games designer who works out of the house. Her video games design work has no relevance to the plot and (so far as I can tell) is included to give her enough flexibility not to have to worry about missing work, without making her anything so unfashionable as a full-time housewife.
For the first 150 pages of the novel, Koontz gives separate stories of Dusty and Martie and what they are doing on one stormy Tuesday in January. At first, the stories seem unrelated except that the primary characters are married to each other, but over time eerie parallels begin to appear. While Martie's story is obviously sinister and disturbing from the very start, Dusty's begins straightforwardly enough, with no hint of anything creepy for the first 64 pages. Although the perspective during those pages switches back and forth, I will stick to Dusty and breeze through, because nothing appears to be happening that needs any further explanation.
Dusty's story begins with Dusty and his crew painting a 3-story house in a gated community, while the owners are on vacation. House painting tends to attract social misfits who are unable or unwilling to submit to industrial discipline, and Dusty's crew is no exception. Skeet, a drug addict, loser and failure on Dusty's crew, climbs to the top of the house and sits there, high on a cocktail of drugs "hallucinating and suicidal" while the crows circle. He says that the angel of death has shown him the Other Side and instructed him to jump. Dusty climbs up onto the roof and tries to talk some sense into Skeet, but Skeet sees no point in going on living. As a crow dive-bombs his shoe, he points to what it left and says, "This is my life." "Don't be ridiculous," Dusty says. "You're not well enough educated to think in metaphors." While Dusty tries to reason with Skeet, the crew commandeers a pile of high quality mattresses from the house (they were given the keys) and stacks them for him to land on. Just as it starts to rain, Skeet runs for the edge. Dusty manages to deflect him, and they both land on the mattresses, dazed and disoriented, but not hurt. Dusty takes Skeet to the New Life Clinic to sober up (Skeet's third stay in rehab, second at this clinic). He then heads home to change into dry clothes and then to swing by Skeet's apartment to pick up some things for him.
In short, a stoned-out addict and loser behaves like a stoned-out addict and loser. Skeet's behavior is not normal, obviously, but it is the sort of normal abnormality one would expect of an addict high on a cocktail of drugs. Nothing suggests a sinister or mysterious explanation.
The only mystery is why Dusty continues to employ this good-for-nothing. We get the answer in Chapter 8, page 49 (the book has short chapters). It turns out the Dusty and Skeet are brothers, or rather, half-brothers. Their mother, Claudette, was in the habit of marrying professors who are tyrannical, arrogant, overbearing jerks, having a child, divorcing, and moving on to the next. Her first husband was a psychologist, and she had a daughter with Down's syndrome, who died. Next came Dusty's father, a professor of literature. Then Skeet's father, another professor of literature. And last was her current husband, Derek Lampton, worst of the lot, a psychologist/psychiatrist and father of their now-teenage son, Derek Lampton, Jr. Claudette herself is no slouch in the arrogant, overbearing jerk department, either. I suspect that this is at least in part a hat tip to The Manchurian Candidate, in which the brainwashed soldier has serious issues with his mother and step-father, who is no mere professor, but a U.S. Senator. It also turns out to be vitally important to the plot. But we don't find out about that until page 527 of a 627 page book, so I will ignore it for now.
Next I will get to Martie, whose story is obviously sinister and creepy from the start, and which keeps dropping clues that are not properly followed up on.
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