The Face of Fear by Dean Koontz

The women of New York City are being hunted by a murder called the Butcher, a modern day Jack the Ripper.

Graham Harris is a clairvoyant, an unwitting witness to murder who has been plagued by visions since a climbing accident five years earlier shattered his confidence and his body and bequeathed to him an unwelcome psychic talent. Harris receives visions of killers when he touches things at murder scenes and has used this ability to help the authorities catch the perpetrator.

Connie Davis is Harris' partner, trying to nurse his traumatised spirit back to strength.

Anthony Prine is a late night talk show host with an unhealthy connection to the Butcher. He is interviewing Harris when Harris receives a vision of the Butcher's vicious slaughter of a pretty green eyed girl called Edna. But now the Butcher is aware of Harris.

Harris has a deadline for his climbing magazine so Davis joins him on the fortieth floor of the forty two storey Bowerton Building on Lexington Avenue for what looks to be an all-nighter. This is where the Butcher traps them, and the book is a nerve shaking game of cat and mouse as Davis and Harris try to evade the killer.

This is one of Koontz's earlier works and it is good, better than most other writers, but not yet completely up to his brilliant best. Most other writers would receive a higher rating for this kind of work but Koontz does a lot better, in places the book is not as well written as his later works.

The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith (Isabel Dalhousie #7)

This Isabel Dalhousie novel was still charming and thoughtful, just not as gripping as some of the others. Isabel is asked to vet three candidates for the headship of a nearby boarding school, feeling obliged she takes it on and finds the affair complicated by one of them being her neice Cat's new boyfriend. Juggling life with baby Charlie, partner Jamie, plans for weddings, work for the Review of Applied Ethics and the machinations of her nemesis Christopher Dove, this is a low key reflection on the subject of family, and of the place of gossip in a small community which Edinburgh, despite it's status as a city, is beneath the surface. Deftly written.