Dean Koontz's "Velocity" Characters Quiz

Answer: Henry Friddle

Henry fell off the roof of his home while attempting to urinate on Ned's dining room windows. Ned hated Henry and his wife because they made a lawn gnome resembling Ned. Ned tells this story at the bar so much Billy rolls his eyes every time he hears it.

Answer: How're they hangin', Kemosabe?

Billy knows Steve is only ten years younger than himself, but thinks that Steve acts twenty years less mature.

Answer: No

Billy proposed to Barbara and she accepted. A month later, she opened a can of vichyssoise for lunch that caused food poisoning, or botulism. By the time Billy found her, she was in a deep coma and has remained so for the last four years.

Answer: Deputy

Lanny is 46 and he is still a deputy, the same rank at which he entered the police force. When he was younger, his father insisted that he be an officer, even though he was an extremely talented cartoonist.

Answer: Charles Dickens

Even though Barbara is in a coma, she speaks broken sentences that Billy puts in a notebook, someday hoping to make sense of them. At the end, when Billy confronts Valis, he tells Billy that Barbara is living in Dickens.

Answer: Performance art

Once, in Australia, Valis attached 20,000 red helium-filled balloons to a suspension bridge to give the illusion that the bridge was being held up by the balloons. Then, from a distance, he popped them all with a remote control.

Answer: A haruspex

Haruspicy is the divination of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially sheep and poultry to tell the future (definition courtesy of Wikipedia). Ivy is too delicate to sacrifice these animals herself, but she has no qualms about delving into roadkill.

Answer: Letting Barbara die, with the removal of the feeding tube.

Dr Ferrier thinks that Barbara wouldn't want to hang on for four years in a coma. Billy thinks that the power of his love and care will help Barbara recover, and in the end of the book, we find that Billy brings Barbara home to care for her, and she speaks some conscious words.

Answer: A raven

Ivy also has a raven painted on her front door. Billy asks if the real raven or the painted came first, and Ivy answers that 'they arrived together.'

Answer: He chops up mannequins with an axe.

Steve tells Billy he only chopped up the mannequins, chair and watermelons to scare her off since she wouldn't leave him alone in the beginning.