Watchers
Watchers is Dean Koontz's 1987 novel, often cited by Koontz himself as his personal favorite among his many books. Travis Cornell is a thirty-six-year-old former Delta Force operator who has retreated, after the death of his young wife, into a quiet life of woodworking and hiking in the Southern California foothills. On a routine hike in the Santa Ana Mountains he meets a golden retriever who appears to be terrified of something pursuing them through the brush. Reluctantly he takes the dog home, where he discovers, in a series of small, eerily deliberate behaviors, that the animal can read, can recognize words on flash cards, and is capable of communication far beyond any dog. The retriever, Einstein, has escaped from a federal genetic-engineering facility called Banodyne. The same lab released a second creature, the Outsider, intelligent in a different way, miserable, and engineered for killing.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Watchers
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On a hike in the Santa Ana Mountains, thirty-six-year-old former Delta Force operator Travis Cornell meets a golden retriever fleeing through the brush.
Yes, into multiple low-budget films in the late 1980s and 1990s. None are considered faithful to Dean Koontz's novel, and Koontz himself has been publicly critical.
It is more thriller than horror, with a genetically engineered creature antagonist and chase sequences. The dog Einstein is the heart of the book.
Watchers was written by Dean Koontz, published in 1987 by Berkley Books.
Watchers is 469 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Watchers takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Watchers is a standalone novel by Dean Koontz, not part of a series.
Watchers is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.