The latest stand-alone novel by perennial favorite Koontz (77 Shadow Street) combines the elements of a classic mystery with a little suspense and a twist of morality tale for good measure. Quinn, who was abandoned when he was three days old on a highway outside of a tiny town in Arizona, has a quirky sense of humor. He understands he's lucky to be alive. Placed in an orphanage, he ponders what his parents might have been like but he has a relatively happy childhood until he starts experiencing something magical. The change upends his life, forcing him to find his people (a romance novelist and her grandpa) and create a family bond while trying to evade government agents who are pursuing them in the Sonoran Desert. Todd Haberkorn, who narrates and performs the novel, does a fine job of adjusting his voice as Quinn ages. A child's simple gratitude, a young man's wanderlust, a woman's heartache, and an old man's experience all give listeners a clear aural sense of which character is speaking. VERDICT Koontz's fans will enjoy the familiarity of the novel, while new listeners will enjoy the plot.--Pam Kingsbury

When Quinn Quicksilver, a young journalist, finds a gold coin, he's pleasantly surprised. When agents of the U.S. government show up looking for him, he's unpleasantly surprised. When he meets a woman who is also (or so she claims) running from the government, Quinn wonders what sort of "strange magnetism" pulled him first toward the coin, then toward the woman, and now toward some unknown destination. Is any of this connected with Quinn's past (he was found, abandoned by the side of the road, when he was a baby)? The thing about a Dean Koontz book is that no matter what its premise, no matter how it starts, it's a sure bet that his fans will soon be utterly engrossed in it. Here, he begins with a whole lot of questions: Who is Quinn? What's up with the gold coin? Who are the government agents? Where is Quinn compelled to go? He then plunges right into the action, eventually answering those questions, of course, and more, too, but not until he's good and ready, and not until we're positively twitching with suspense. Another sure-fire hit from a thriller master.

A foundling boy and his tiny circle of friends must save the world from creatures even less human than they are. Ever since he was abandoned on an Arizona highway three days after his birth, Quinn Quicksilver has lived something of a marginal life. Discovered by lineman Hakeem Kaspar and two buddies and brought to the Mater Misericordiæ orphanage, he was passed over repeatedly for adoption and remained with the nuns, who raised him until he landed a job for Arizona!magazine writing about people too dead to lodge complaints. This very limited stability comes crashing down hours after a strange, unrecognizable magnetism leads him to a valuable gold coin in an abandoned restaurant. As he's sitting in a diner afterward, he's suddenly flanked by two members of the Internal Security Agency who quietly demand that he come along without making a fuss. Escaping in the fuss that instantly ensues, Quinn takes it on the lam until that magnetic force brings him up against contractor Sparky Rainking, who moonlights as novelist Daphne Larkrise, and his granddaughter, Bridget. The Rainkings, who have their own history with the ISA, do their best to bring Quinn up to speed, but Bridget's bombshell announcement that "several sequences in my genome are not human," though it offers a theory as to why the same people who've targeted her and Sparky are now setting their sights on Quinn, raises a lot more questions than it answers. What sort of beings are the Rainkings? Is Quinn not fully human? And what sort of relationships can he expect to form with the other sort-of-humans who seem increasingly to be littering the Arizona landscape? Don't lose sleep over the answers. Just sit back and enjoy what turns out to be quite a ride. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.