From the very beginning of Dean Koontz’s latest thriller, “Brother Odd,” when protagonist Odd Thomas sees gatherings of Bodachs (shadowy demons) hovering near the beds of sickly young children, and hears the voice of his long-dead, lost love speaking through the voices of the children, it’s obvious to him that danger is afoot and he may be the only one who can save the young patients.
Beaten down by years of ghostly encounters and run-ins with more dangerous (and more corporeal) types, Odd Thomas – still mourning the death of his girlfriend Stormy Llewellyn – is holed up and hiding at St. Bartholemew’s Abbey, near California’s Sierra Nevada.
The abbey is just the sort of strange place that would throw its doors open to a person like Odd, the one-time fry cook who also communicates with dead people. Also residing there are monks, like Brother Knuckles (neé Salvadore), who once worked for the mob, and Brother John Heineman, a brilliant scientist and philanthropist whose studies in quantum physics left him rich, humbled and “spooked” by his scientific findings.
When yet another monk, Brother Timothy, goes missing, Odd’s misgivings over his Bodach sighting are proved correct. Odd enlists the help of Sister Angela and the suspicious-acting Brother Rodian Romanovich in his investigations of the Bodach activity, leading to a totally unexpected culprit.
And after he stumbles over the missing monk’s body – only to find it has mysteriously reanimated – Odd realizes this situation may be darker than his past brushes with death and danger. As the “Odd one” himself notes, “Nothing supernatural has ever harmed me. My wounds and losses have all been at the hands of human beings, some in porkpie hats, but most dressed otherwise.”
This ongoing line about gangsters in porkpie hats is one of the endearing traits of Koontz’s protagonist, who is given to humorous asides as much as his creator, and who has ably recounted his adventures in two of Koontz’s best novels, “Odd Thomas” and “Forever Odd.”
If there is one failing in “Brother Odd,” it is that the humorous asides sometimes threaten to overpower the chilling parts. But it’s hard to find fault with an author who can mix lines like “… I was locked in the trunk of a Buick with the two dead Rhesus monkeys and the bratwurst …” while dishing out horrors that make the skin crawl and teaming up perennial audience favorite Odd Thomas with a dog named Boo and the ghost of the King of rock ‘n’ roll (among others).
Odd Thomas’ latest adventure will make a believer out of even the hardest-nosed soul.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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Brother Odd
By Dean Koontz
Bantam, 384 pages, $27
