i'm trying very hard to get into some Dean Koontz' book, but i got frightened after only the first chapter, wherein the main character is walking her dog and get's startled by her own shadow.
I've started about five Dean Koontz books and have yet to be able to finish any of them (except for
Demon Seed, which I was stuck with on a bus and which was a bad laugh all the way through). I find him fairly overrated, myself, or maybe I just can't handle his style; I can't deal with the kind of author who gives characters names like "Enoch Cain, Jr." and "Thomas Vanadium" with a straight face and pretensions towards integrity.
On the scary-books front, I've gone on a Peter Straub bender this Spring Break. I've read
Ghost Story and
Magic Terror so far, and I'd recommend both;
Magic Terror is an uneven but generally good short-fiction collection, albeit a little over-reliant on child abuse (and with a last story so over-the-top black-Melville that I couldn't finish it), while
Ghost Story is an excellent novel provided you're willing to work with horror that doesn't always play fair and involves a lot of the typical genre tropes.