Velocity
Readers rate it 3.7 (117 on Hardcover)
460 pages · Released May 1, 2006 · Bantam Books
Content report card
Velocity parent’s guide: what’s inside
LGBTQ+ themes
What it offers
A note for parents
Velocity is a psychological thriller centered on a serial killer's murder plot, featuring multiple on-page and implied murders, intense psychological manipulation, and escalating moral dilemmas. The protagonist is forced to make impossible choices between victims, creating sustained dread and a nightmarish atmosphere. While the story explores themes of courage and moral responsibility, the graphic violence, frequent threats of death, and relentless tension make this unsuitable for younger readers; it's best suited to older teens comfortable with dark adult suspense.
Analyzed by AI · 1 month ago
Read it with your kids?
Rate it and suggest an age to help other parents.
From the publisher
This is the story of an innocent man forced by a serial killer to choose who will be murdered next. William Wiles is an easygoing thirty-something, a bartender who lives a quiet life alone until a serial killer singles him out - not to kill him, but to force him to decide who the next victim will be. On his SUV Billy f... This is the story of an innocent man forced by a serial killer to choose who will be murdered next. William Wiles is an easygoing thirty-something, a bartender who lives a quiet life alone until a serial killer singles him out - not to kill him, but to force him to decide who the next victim will be. On his SUV Billy finds the first note: 'If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blonde schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.' Billy pays an informal visit to an acquaintance, Lanny Olson, who is a policeman, and who thinks the note is a prank. The schoolteacher dies. The next note reverses the choices: if Billy takes the note to the police, a mother of two young children will die. If he doesn't, an unmarried man who won't be much missed will die. Lanny has to take this note seriously but the deadline runs out before he can decide how to make his involvement official. Billy doesn't hear from him again because Lanny himself, unmarried, who will not be much missed, has become the next victim. There will be more communications from the killer, more hideous choices, with ever tighter decision times, and with each choice Billy is drawn deeper into an accelerating nightmare, which steadily becomes more personal, more confrontational, until he is isolated, with no one to turn to and no one to rely on but himself. Finally he must risk everything to save the intended victims.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Suspense
- Serial murders
- Meurtres en série
- Romans, nouvelles
- Choix (Psychologie)
- Psychopathes
- Choice (Psychology)
- Fiction, mystery & detective, general
- Fiction, psychological
- Serial murders, fiction
Share this guide
ISBN 9780553588255 · Bantam Books