Odd Hours (2008) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• Thomas Kinkade: A twenty-something young man who can see and talk to the dead, although they don't talk back.
• Valonia Fontenelle: she is one of the bad guys.
• Birdena Hopkins: a woman that gives Odd a lift to the harbor.
• Elvis: he was a ghost but he ascended to light; Odd's friend.
• Ozzie Boone: famous mystery writer, Odd's mentor and a good friend.
• Stormy Llewellyn: she is the woman that Odd loves and will always love; she died in the first book.
• Boo: Odd's ghost dog that followed him from the abbey in "Brother Odd". Boo helps him and guides him.
• Blossom Rosedale: One of Odd's friends in Magic Beach. AKA The Happy Monster. She had her face horribly scarred when her father dropped her into a barrel where he was burning trash with kerosene.
• Utgard Rolf: One of the leaders of the bad guys.
• Raphael: A golden retriever that helps guide Odd.
• "Hutch" Lawrence Hutchison: Odd's employer in Magic Beach.
• Samuel Oliver Whittle: One of the bad guys.
• Hoss Shackett: Chief of Police in Magic Beach, California.
• Joseph Cotten: One of the bad guys.
• Annamaria: A strange woman that Odd finds after she appeared in his dream. He nicknamed her "Lady of the Bell".
• Reverend Charles Moran: The reverend of the local church in Magic Beach.
• Harry Lime: An alias that Odd Thomas uses.
• Frank Sinatra: Old Blue Eyes, The Voice, etc. Sinatra has not moved on since his death and turns to Odd for help.
• Cousin Melvina: Add a description of this character.
• Bodi Booker
• Corrina
• Wyatt Porter
• MR. Sinatra
• Matt Damon
• Birdie Hopkins
• Jamie
• Dorothy
• Mr. Hutchison
• Nancy Coleman
• Jack Daniel
• Lorraine
• Grandma Melvina Belmont Singleton
• Deborah Kerr
• Frederica
• Robert Mitchum
• Hassan
• Norman
• Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra
• Mrs. Moran
• Rod Stewart
• Todd
• Joseph Ryan
• Reverend Moran
• Moonbeam
• Swithin Murdoch
• Fred
• Hutch Hutchison
• Adrian White

Quotes edit see section history

• “By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I’ll learn how to die, and leave the world and hope to land in light.”

  Odd Thomas

• “Boo settled on the catwalk and rolled onto his side. He extended one paw toward me and raked the air—universal canine sign language that meant 'Sit down, stay awhile, keep me company, rub my tummy.'”

  Odd Thomas

• “Thugs who worked for the government usually tried not to look like thugs.”

  Odd Thomas

• “I am a half-assed champion of the imperiled innocent: able to see the lingering dead, but unable to hear what of value they might wish to tell me; informed by predictive dreams that never provide me with sufficient detail to be certain of what they predict, of when the event will occur, or of where the horror will go down; without gun or sword, armored only with cookies. All of this fearsome uncertainty ought to have made a hermit of me, ought to have sent me fleeing to a cave or to a remote cabin, in curmudgeonly rejection of the dead and the living. But my heart tells me that the gift was given to be used, imperfect or not, and that if I deny it, I will wither away in despair and will earn no life after this one, no reunion with my lost girl.”

  Odd Thomas

• “Although I repeatedly glanced behind, I caught no glimpse of anyone trailing me. Perhaps the skin on the back of my neck prickled not because someone might be following me but instead because I was so alone, with no friend to turn to except an eighty-eight-year-old actor who lived inside himself to such an extent that he never noticed the blood on my face or, later, the ice pack held to my head.”

  Odd Thomas

• “In the fog, on the greenbelt, alongside Hecate’s Canyon, the six prime specimens of Canis latrans had none of the appeal of any of the various species and breeds that pet shops put in their windows. This was unusual, believe it or not, because coyotes sometimes can have a goofy charm. They are more closely related to wolves than to dogs, lean and sinewy, efficient predators, but with feet too big for their bodies and ears too big for their heads, they can appear a little puppy like,at least as cute as Iran’s homicidal dictator when he puts on a leisure suit and has his photo taken eating ice-cream cones with grade-school children whose parents have volunteered them to be suicide bombers.”

  Odd Thomas

• “Chief Hoss Shackett underwent a change worthy of one of those intelligent alien machines in that toy-based movie,Transformers, that can morph from an ordinary period Dodge into a giant robot with a hundred times the mass of the vehicle from which it unfolded. I do not mean that the chief suddenly filled the cell and left me without elbow room. He metamorphosed from Mr. Hyde, if Mr. Hyde had been a sadistic warden in a Soviet gulag, into the benign Dr. Jekyll, if Dr. Jekyll had been a folksy sheriff from a small town where the biggest crime in twenty years had been when Lulamay copied Bobbijune’s rhubarb-jam recipe and passed it off as her own in the county-fair competition.”

  Odd Thomas

• “I have only a few times been in a position to overhear bad men conspiring to commit evil deeds, and on every occasion, they had been pretty much like Joey and Utgard. Those who choose to live criminal lives are not the brightest among us. This truth inspires a question: If evil geniuses are so rare, why do so many bad people get away with so many crimes against their fellow citizens and, when they become leaders of nations, against humanity? Edmund Burke provided the answer in 1795:The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  Odd Thomas

• “There,” I said, “and there, and there,” and star by star I drew the Cassiopeia of classic mythology, and recognized in that familiar pattern the mother of my lost girl, and in the mother I saw also the daughter, there above, beautiful and bright, for all eternity, her timeless light shining upon me, until one day I at last stepped out of time and joined her.”

  Odd Thomas

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”

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• “Grief can destroy you—or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it.

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• “Loss is the hardest thing,” I said. “But it’s also the teacher that’s the most difficult to ignore.”

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• By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I’ll learn how to die, and leave the world and hope to land in light.

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• Edmund Burke provided the answer in 1795: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I would only add this: It is also essential that good men and women not be educated and propagandized into believing that real evil is a myth and that all malevolent behavior is merely the result of a broken family’s or a failed society’s shortcomings, amenable to cure by counseling and by the application of new economic theory.

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• Malevolence and paranoia cohabit in a twisted mind. Bad men trust no one because they know the treachery of which they themselves are capable.

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• The given world dazzles with wonder, poetry, and purpose. The man-made world, on the other hand, is a perverse realm of ego and envy, where power-mad cynics make false idols of themselves and where the meek have no inheritance because they have gladly surrendered it to their idols in return not for lasting glory but for an occasional parade, not for bread but for the promise of bread.

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• I have no incapacitating fear of either heights or darkness. We spend nine months in a nurturing darkness before we’re born, and we aspire to the highest of all places when we die.

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• To do something, to do what you feel sure is right and in the aid of justice, you sometimes have to do things that, when recalled on lonely nights, make you wonder if in fact you are the good man that you like to believe you are. Such doubts are high cards in the devil’s hand, and he knows how to play them well, in hope of bringing you to despair and ennui, if not to self-destruction.

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• Bad men wound and destroy one another, although as targets they prefer those who are innocent and as pure as this world allows anyone to be. They feed on violence, but they feast on the despoiling of what is good.

  Highlighted by 27 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Magic Beach: The town where Odd's living.
• Hecate Canyon: a canyon near Magic Beach.
• Pico Mundo, California: the town where Odd was born.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Bodach: Ink-black creatures, with no facial features, fluid in shape, sometimes catlike, sometimes wolflike. They swarm to places where extreme violence or a natural catastrophe will soon occur, as though they feed on human suffering, to which they react with frenzied ecstasy.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Brother Odd, and followed by Odd Interlude.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Dean Koontz (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. David Aaron Baker (Reader)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Authors, A-Z › ( K ) › Koontz, Dean
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Thrillers › Suspense
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Dean Koontz: Author's website

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