Dean Koontz sure looks and acts like a normal person. I saw him the other night on one of those TV newsmagazine shows. Soft-spoken. Courtly manners as he gives a personal tour of his southern California mansion. Pleasant scenes of Koontz and wife taking the sleek black Benz to his favorite restaurant. Handshakes and smiles all around for staff and customers.

So where does this nice man dredge up the buckets of terror and gore that he melts down and forges into best-selling books that make us want a reassuring hug from Mommy?

Koontz fans know about his personal baggage: the abusive childhood, the struggle to write and earn a living. But other writers have likewise passed through such crucibles. Koontz has something else. He seems to know us, our deepest foibles and fears. He spins them into suspense novels that pulse with ordinary characters propelled into chilling, can't-take-your-eyes-off-the-page horrors.

In False Memory, young Martie Rhodes manages to balance a busy life as a wife and video-game designer in southern California. And, being a warm and compassionate person, she finds times to shepherd dear, agoraphobic friend Susan to therapy sessions with that nice Dr. Ahriman. Susan is so afraid of the outdoors that she will leave her apartment only after much wheedling and cajoling by Martie. And there's that weird complaint by Susan that, somehow, a strange male visitor may be bypassing the tight-shut windows and double-locked door.

Martie discovers some problems of her own. So many normal, domestic items begin to look like potential weapons. Kitchen knives. Scissors. Even those little, yellow plastic ears of corn that get shoved into corncobs. Gardening implements. Power tools. Her sharp fingernails, which could plunge into the unsuspecting flesh of her kind and loving husband, Dusty. It's ''autophobia'' that now afflicts Martie: fear of oneself.

By now, Koontz had me worrying what my beloved was doing in the kitchen while I read False Memory.

The False Memory weirdness includes a socialite with a thing for Keanu Reeves, Japanese haiku poetry and references to Manchurian Candidate brainwashing. There is some sly humor here. And Koontz cuts us a break by revealing pretty early on why the Rhodes family and friends have been plunged into terror-filled chaos.

But that doesn't lessen the suspense.False Memory

By Dean Koontz

Bantam, 627 pp., $26.95