Intensity

Intensity is a novel by the American writer Dean Koontz, published in 1995. It alternates between the viewpoint of the woman it follows and that of the man hunting her, and the author has said he wrote it to do without the usual pauses in a thriller.

Chyna Shepherd grew up with a neglectful and abusive mother and has never entirely stopped expecting harm. The weekend she spends with the family of her friend Laura Templeton gives her something she has been looking for without naming it, and it ends when Edgler Vess, who describes himself as a homicidal adventurer, breaks into the house and kills the family.

Chyna gets out, and what changes her from a woman saving herself into somebody pursuing something else is the knowledge of where Vess is going next. From that point she has to follow him while staying unobserved, and the novel stays inside the tension of the pursuit almost continuously, with a great deal of it taking place on the road and in places where there is nobody to ask for help.