Long before actress Patricia Arquette was wowing a growing group of cult viewers with her antics on TV’s “Medium,” Dean Koontz’s hero, Odd Thomas, was talking with dead folks (like Elvis) and sussing out the particulars of a given mystery with the help of long-dead friends and acquaintances (in Odd’s case, the dead don’t talk back, helping only through gesticulations and such).
An amiable fellow whose main talent in the land of the living is as a fry cook, and who likes to avoid getting behind the wheel of an automobile, it isn’t surprising that Koontz’s many fans fell in love with Odd. Or that Koontz (“Velocity,” “Life Expectancy,” “Odd Thomas”) decided to revisit Pico Mundo, Calif., and the world of Odd Thomas in his latest best seller, “Forever Odd.”
Things begin with a jolt – literally – as Odd wakes up in the wee hours of the morning only to find one Dr. Jessup sitting in his bedroom. Since it’s well before a reasonable breakfast hour, Odd figures Jessup is dead and follows the teary-eyed spirit to the good doctor’s home.
Worried about the doctor’s son, Danny – a 21-year-old friend from childhood who is afflicted with osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bones – Odd, as usual, is unable to control the urge to act when a spirit calls on him for help. But after he enters the house to search for Danny, and the body of Dr. Jessup, Odd is taken by surprise as an unseen assailant knocks him unconscious with a Taser gun.
When Danny turns out to have gone missing, Odd follows a sort of “psychic” trail left behind by the perpetrators and the victim. That trail leads Odd to an abandoned, burned-out Indian Casino, destroyed after an earthquake, where dozens of people died. Unfortunately, the murder and subsequent kidnapping were committed to lure Odd to this spot.
It seems that a beautiful porn entrepreneur – and believer in wacked-out, New Age religious stuff – named Datura has hired a couple of thugs to help her corral Odd and force him to share his abilities. Like many others who learned of Odd Thomas’ abilities through the media, Datura desires the power of being able to talk to – and see – the dead, and she’s willing to sacrifice Odd’s friend if he doesn’t help her. Managing to escape, Odd helps Danny go into hiding while he and a few undead friends play an edgy game of cat and mouse with Datura and her two muscle-bound goons.
Unlike “Odd Thomas,” this sequel leans much more heavily on its thriller aspects, leaving little time for Koontz’s sometimes distracting musings about life (or afterlife). That may or may not be a good thing, depending on which camp you fall into: readers who appreciate Koontz’s sometimes overindulged penchant for dragging out suspense and sometimes overly sweet vision of life; or readers who love it when Koontz avoids too many tangents about life’s weirdness, preferring, instead, to rev up his engines and let the fur fly.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of oddness in “Forever Odd” – talking to dead folks, a childhood friend with a rare bone disease, an eccentric villainess. In the world according to Koontz, there are rarely any vanilla types wandering about.
But if “Odd Thomas” was cream-of-the-
crop Koontz (like “Dark Rivers of the Heart,” “Intensity,” etc.), then “Forever Odd” is the crème de le crème of Koontz’s offerings. It has unusual characters, auctorial rants (this time about alternative religions), lots of dead folks and a suspense factor that will leave even the most steely-eyed armchair detective sweating bullets during the last 100 pages.
Dorman T. Shindler, a freelance writer from Missouri, contributes to a number of national magazines and newspapers.
Forever Odd
By Dean Koontz
Bantam, 416 pages, $27
