The Other Emily

By Dean Koontz. (Thomas & Mercer, 362 pages, $28.99.)

It's been years since California detectives arrested Ronny Lee Jessup, a serial kidnapper and abuser who kept women trapped in a maze of tunnels built under his house. Now he's locked safely away in Folsom State Prison. But not all of the women's remains were found.

One of these was Emily Carlino, a striking woman with whom writer David Thorne was madly in love. Missing for 10 years after her broken-down car was found on a coastal highway, she's presumed to be a Jessup victim. After all this time, David simply wants closure. He wants Emily to lie at peace in a special place where he can visit her. He even starts to visit Jessup in prison, trying to coax memories or details out of the killer, but Jessup toys with him, dangling half-answers in exchange for prison money.

Meanwhile, an old man has bought the Jessup farmhouse and rents it out for tours to thrill-seekers. David cannot resist and wanders through the dark tunnels and compartments and imagines the horrors that took place there over the years.

In the midst of these turns, Maddison Sutton appears at a restaurant where David is having dinner. All eyes turn as the dark-haired beauty has a seat at the bar. David grows full of wonder and excitement because this woman is a dead ringer for Emily, except in one important way: She has not aged a bit in the lost decade. She insists she never knew Emily. But as they begin to date and fall in love, David realizes everything, from the tiny birthmark on her belly to the foods she cooks to how she kisses and makes love, is Emily. How can it be?

In his signature style, Koontz brings in supernatural possibilities to explain this miracle, but none quite fit. The love-struck David finally decides that whatever the truth, he's been given a lifesaving gift: a second chance. Yet, being a novelist, still he digs. He even has a harrowing encounter in the cobwebbed tunnels of the farmhouse on a second, unauthorized visit.

The author's conclusion is a new bent even for him, and it will likely delight his followers. I certainly can't say, "Man, I saw that coming."