Odd Thomas (2004) (edit title/settings)

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Characters edit see section history

• Odd Thomas: Odd Thomas is the protagonist of this book. He has the ability to see and communicate with the dead who have not moved on from this life. Odd is twenty years old and lives in Pico Mundo, where he is a short-order cook. Aside from the fact he talks to the deceased daily, he is an extremely simple person. He says this is because in order to stay sane, he must simplify every other aspect in his life. He wears jeans and a t-shirt everyday, he has no car, no life insurance, he has never traveled outside of his hometown of Pico Mundo, and he refuses to have a career in law enforcement. Odd Thomas refuses to work in law enforcement because of his huge fear of guns, however, he still helps the police department solve many crimes with his extraordinary gift.
• Stormy Llewellyn: Bronwen, Stormy, Llewellyn is Odd's fiance. They have been together for four years. She has dark hair, brown eyes, and is very tan. She works at Burke and Bailey's, an ice cream shop. She plans on owning her own ice creams shop by the time she is twenty-four years old. She is a very motivated young woman, and she believes in delayed gratification. As a child, she lived in an orphanage after her parents died, but eventually went to live with her uncle, who works as a pastor. At the end of the book, Stormy is killed in the mall shooting. However, she is a ghost for a little while after, and Odd has trouble believing that she really is dead.
• Wyatt Porter: Wyatt Porter is the Chief of Police in Pico Mundo. Odd and Chief Porter are very close friends. He knows that Odd Thomas communicates with the dead, and he uses Odd's tips to catch criminals. He acts like he doesn't know anything about Odd's secret, and he also helps minimize how much Odd knows in the media and around the police department. Towards the end of the book, he is shot four times, but he ends up surviving.
• P. Oswald Boone: Odd Thomas calls P. Oswald Boone "Little Ozzie." He is a very famous writer that lives in Pico Mundo. Odd and Little Ozzie met when Little Ozzie judged a writing contest at Odd Thomas's school, and Odd won. Since then, they have become very good friends. This novel is actually a memoir of Odd's life, and he wrote it because Little Ozzie kept pushing him to. Little Ozzie weighs over four hundred pounds and has six fingers on one of his hands.
• Terrible Chester: Terrible Chester is Little Ozzie's cat. He is a very minor character.
• Granny Sugars: Granny Sugars is Odd Thomas's grandmother. Although she's dead now, when she was alive, she was an avid poker player. Odd says that Granny Sugars helped him survive his childhood because he didn't have good parents.
• Rosalia Sanchez: Odd's landlord is Rosalia Sanchez, and he lives above her garage. She is a very sweet old lady, but for the past couple years, she has been worried that she will become invisible. She lost many of her family members in the 9-11 plane crash, and she believes they are just invisible. Still, Odd Thomas checks on her every morning before he leaves for work.
• Terri Stambaugh: Terri Stambaugh owns the Pico Mundo Grille, where Odd is a short-order cook. She is a widow in her early forties. She has an obsession with Elvis and can tell you where he was and what he was doing on any random day. Odd says she is his mentor, and she helped him survive by giving him a job at the grille after he moved out at a very young age.
• Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley is one of Odd's many dead acquaintaces. He is probably the ghost that Odd sees the most often. However, he is a minor character in the story.
• Bob Robertson: Odd Thomas first saw Bob Robertson on August 14 at the Pico Mundo Grille. Odd nicknames him "Fungus Man" because he is very pale, and his hair looks yellow. Odd gets a very bad feeling about him because bodachs, evil spirits, are surrounding him. Odd Thomas ends up breaking into his house and discovers that he has an obsession with serial killers, and he suspects that Fungus Man has something horrible planned on August 15. He doesn't know what it is, so Odd is racing time to figure out what he's going to do. However, later that night, Fungus Man shows up dead in Odd's apartment. This leads Odd Thomas to discover that he has partners.
• Simon Varner: Simon Varner is one of the accomplices in the mass murder at the mall. He is also a police officer. He has a tattoo that says POD, which stands for Prince of Darkness. Odd Thomas figured out he was a consipirator when he saw that Bob Robertson had a tattoo that meant something similar. Simon, Eckles, Robertson, and Gosset all worshiped the devil. Odd Thomas ends up shooting Simon Varner in the mall in order to stop him from killing anymore people.
• Karla Porter: Karla Porter is Wyatt Porter's wife. She is a very minor character in the story.
• Bern Eckles: Bern Eckles is one of the three conspirators in the mall shooting, and he also is a police officer on the Pico Mundo force. Odd Thomas did not know he was involved until he hit a man with a baseball bat that had just shot three security guards and unmasked him. Eckles believed in satanism.
• Kevin Gosset: Kevin Gosset is a teacher and also another conspirator in the mall disaster. He was driving the truck that was full of bombs, but he was caught when Odd was trying to disable the bomb, and a worker ran him down with a forklift. In the interrogations, Gosset was the one to tell the whole story about what and how it all happened.

Quotes edit see section history

• “The Egg is art.”

  Odd Thomas

• “I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I'm old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.”

  Odd Thomas

• “I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.”

  Odd Thomas

• “Anyone who smiled this relentlessly was a simpleton—or a deceiver with something to hide.”

• “I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.”

  Odd Thomas

• “Boys will be boys afterall, and sociopathic boys will be, sociopathic.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Camp
• St. Bart
• California
• Mojave
• Green Moon Mall
• Heaven

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Bodach: Shadowy beings that are invisible to most with the exception of Odd. These beings have been observed to follow people who will murder others or be murdered by others.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by Forever Odd.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Dean Koontz (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. David Aaron Baker (Reader) - reader of the unabridged audio cassette edition by Books on Tape

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3561.O55 O33 2003
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Some violence and scary themes

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Authors, A-Z › ( K ) › Koontz, Dean
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Thrillers › Suspense

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Dean Koontz: Author's website

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history