does anyone recognize this fictional book

[erhutt]

In this book I want to listen to again, the man who is the main character has very unusual experiences where he hears a whistling sound and then is carried away from where he is on earth to a distant place. Here he observes a mining operation in which large beetle type bugs are used to burrow through the dirt to bring up gem stones (I think rubies). Then the man is unexpectedly swept back to where he was on earth. Later we learn that the mining thing is happening on some distant planet in space. I remember the man bringing specimens back to earth and taking them to academic people to evaluate - one of the beetles and some of the gems.

I actually listened to the book-on-tape version of this book which I borrowed from the library several years ago. I have spent a great deal of time searching but cannot re-discover the title.
Your help is greatly appreciated.

[darthgunner]

Dean Koontz - The Bad Place ?

[murphy]

Originally Posted by darthgunner

Dean Koontz - The Bad Place ?

I was thinking it was a Dean Koontz book too, but I couldn't remember the title.

[erhutt]

Thanks so much! I'm sure that is the book. I read some reviews and came across this (I had only a hazy recollection of the twins):

Classic, nasty Dean Koontz, 10 Jan 2007
By S.B. "will work for books"(Bretagne, France) - See all my reviews
Who else but Dean Koontz could cram incestuous lesbian twins, cannibalistic cats, mutation through teleportation and an unredeemedly evil, testosterone-driven subhuman villain into one book?

From the opening moment when Frank Pollard wakes up in an alley with no memory, to the last page of its twisty plot, Koontz never quite finishes piling up the shocks here, never lets up the pace for one paragraph. Bobby and Julie Dakota, the married private detectives hired to try to discover Frank's missing past, are so very lovely, so head-over-heels in love and so perfectly in tune with one another that it can only be a matter of time before something really nasty happens to them. And it does.

This is truly a horror novel worthy of the name. I've pretty much despaired now of finding a book that will actually scare me: but this did all the next best things, shocking, distressing, gloriously well-plotted... Koontz is the best horror novelist beginning with K that I know!