Odd Thomas
Book One in the Odd Thomas series
Dean Koontz

The dead don't talk. I don't know why. But they do try to communicate, with a short order cook in a small desert town serving as the reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn.
Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd's otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo's sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it's different.
A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world's worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd's deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.
Today is August 14.
In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares - and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.

Seeing as how I had accidentally read the last and third book in this series (Brother Odd) first, and quite enjoyed it, I knew I had to get my hands on the others in this series. This book was even better and more enjoyable than the third one was, though I knew how it was going to end thanks to the spoilers in Brother Odd. It think it's better if a reader would read this one first - of course that's how the series is supposed to be read in the first place.

This book pulls the reader in from the start and makes it very difficult to put down. The dialogue is crisp, realistic, and refreshing and the storyline is unique.

Odd knows that some terror will happen the very next day and from his dreams he believes that it will be a horrible shooting either at a local bowling alley or movie theatre. What the horror ends up being is worse than what he had predicted and involves many more people that he thought.

The characters in this book are sympathetic and believable and the writing itself is second to none.

Even Terrible Chester, the cat that will outlive is all, is refreshing and fun.

As a warning, chances are you will cry at the end of this book. However, unlike most times one cries in a novel or a movie, you don't feel like it tried to emotionally manipulate you into tears. It comes naturally and the sorrow is an integral part of the story line.

I would highly recommend this book to others with the caveat of reading it before the others in this series.

My rating: Five out of five snails.