Odd Thomas
Dean Koontz's 2003 novel introduces Odd Thomas, a twenty-year-old fry cook at the Pico Mundo Grille in a fictional Mojave Desert town, whose unusual gift is that he can see the lingering dead. The dead never speak, but they show up in his diner and his apartment when they want something fixed before they can move on, and they sometimes lead him to crimes that have not happened yet. They are also accompanied by what Odd calls bodachs, oily shadow creatures that swarm wherever great violence is about to occur. When a cloud of bodachs follows a stranger into the Grille and then settles over the town's mall, Odd has hours to figure out what is coming and stop it. Koontz writes Odd's first-person voice as drily funny and surprisingly tender, and the book launched a long bestseller series and a Stephen Sommers film adaptation.
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What you might want to know about Odd Thomas
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Twenty-year-old Odd Thomas works the grill at a Pico Mundo diner and quietly sees the dead. When a strange customer arrives at the diner trailed by hyena-like spirits called bodachs, Odd knows the day is going to end badly.
Dean Koontz wrote seven main Odd Thomas novels, plus several novellas and a graphic-novel prequel. The series is complete with Saint Odd (2015).
Yes. A 2013 film adaptation starring Anton Yelchin was released. The film follows the first novel and was Yelchin's last completed film before his death in 2016.
Odd Thomas was written by Dean Koontz, published in 2003 by Bantam Books.
Odd Thomas is 399 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Odd Thomas takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Odd Thomas is a standalone novel by Dean Koontz, not part of a series.
Odd Thomas is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.