Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas is a thriller by the American writer Dean Koontz, published in 2003. Its title is the name of its protagonist, a twenty-year-old short-order cook, and it was the first of a series of novels about him.

Odd has an ability he did not ask for: he sees the dead. At the beginning of the book he is approached silently by the ghost of a young girl who was brutally raped and murdered, and through his ability to understand the dead he is led psychically to her killer, a former schoolmate of his named Harlo Landerson.

The novel also sets out where Odd came from, showing layer by layer how a dysfunctional upbringing has shaped the life he has now, and how he came by his unusual name, and it stays in his own voice from beginning to end. Six sequels followed, among them Forever Odd, Brother Odd and Odd Hours, along with a short novel, Odd Interlude, and the book was also adapted into a film in 2013.