Watchers – Dean Koontz

Travis Cornell encounters a golden retriever while hiking in the wilderness. The dog is friendly, but refuses to allow Travis to continue down the trail he was walking on. It gradually becomes obvious that the dog is protecting Travis from some danger. Travis, becoming aware of the danger, retreats and goes home, taking the dog with him. The dog exhibits remarkable intelligence and intuition, one result of which is Travis becoming acquainted with Nora Devon, who quickly becomes fast friends with Travis and the dog.
Nora and Travis find themselves fitting together clues, like pieces of a puzzle, to learn where the golden retriever, now dubbed “Einstein”, came from, and what is behind his remarkable intelligence. While Einstein is benign and beneficent, there is an opposite, equal intelligence; but malevolent, aggressive, and driven by hate, that stemmed from the same genesis. Nora and Travis find themselves in a deadly hide and seek game with Einstein’s unidentified malevolent opposite, secret government labs, international political operatives, and the ruthless, seamy denizens of organized crime. It is, as most of Koontz’s book are, a superb, entertaining thriller/suspense with moral admonitions that you can chew on long after finishing the book and retiring it to your permanent collection of books, which is where it belongs.

#ad