cover image Deeply Odd: An Odd Thomas Novel

Deeply Odd: An Odd Thomas Novel

Dean Koontz. Bantam, $28 (352p) ISBN 978-0-553-80773-8

Series fans will appreciate more than newcomers bestseller Koontz’s sixth paranormal crime novel featuring itinerant fry cook and prophetic dreamer Odd Thomas (after 2012’s Odd Apocalypse). Thomas, who is “drawn to trouble as reliably as iron to a magnet” and can see “the spirits of the lingering dead,” has been searching for the meaning of his life for two years—ever since he saved many people (though not the love of his life, Stormy Llewellyn) from a shootout in a California shopping mall. When Thomas investigates a truck he knows to be evil, he receives images of a masked man in a blood-red suit torching children. Convinced that what’s he’s glimpsed is a vision of a tragedy to come, Thomas dedicates himself to preventing it—after fending off the truck driver with a barrage of fruit. The farce in this novel often undercuts the terror. (June)