Hero has a ghost of a chance to solve crimes in 'Odd Thomas'

March 16, 2004|Globe Staff

Odd Thomas, By Lee Dean Koontz, Bantam, 416 pp., $26.95

Odd Thomas, the hero in Dean Koontz's new novel, believes that "a little terror goes a long way." And after reading this suspenseful, memorable, and thoroughly entertaining tale, named after its unassuming protagonist, so does a little humor, social commentary, and feel-good optimism.

Odd is an earnest 20-year-old short-order cook whose professional aspirations extend only as far as a job at Tire World in the local mall. But he has a special gift that keeps him plenty busy when he is not perfecting his egg art and crafting cheeseburgers of "exemplary quality." "I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it," he says. And with the help of Wyatt Porter, chief of the Pico Mundo Police Department, Odd brings killers to justice and is able to prevent acts of violence from occurring by virtue of this gift that allows him a glimpse into the paranormal.

Some of these ghosts, or bodachs, that Odd sees exist to apparently entertain, foreshadow a bloody event, or to seek justice for their deaths. The first bodach in the novel is Penny Kallisto, a young girl who was brutalized and murdered by a loafer named Harlo Landerson. After Penny haunts Odd for a few days she leads him to Landerson, who is captured in a hair-raising scene that gives Odd some action-hero credentials. The other friendly bodachs include: a weepy Elvis Presley, still mourning the death of his mother, Gladys; a wry and cheeky Tom Jedd, a local stonemason who lost his arm in an automobile accident; and a prostitute who saves Odd from a pack of hungry coyotes.

Odd is right at home in Pico Mundo, a hot, sleepy town in southern California where nothing much ever happens. He exists in his world not as a tortured young soul haunted by ghosts, but as an optimistic, self-aware yet eccentric figure. He has a deep love for his girlfriend, Stormy Llewelyn, a moralist who believes that this life is only training for the others that are to come. Their relationship is sweet and peculiar at the same time; they believe that they are destined to be together because a carnival fortune-telling machine told them so and they have matching birthmarks, though Stormy's may or may not be a tattoo.