Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Summary:

Strange times need strange heroes.

Odd Thomas lives always between two worlds. He can see the lingering dead and knows that even in chaos, there is order, purpose, and strange meaning that invites our understanding but often thwarts it.

Intuition has brought Odd Thomas to the quaint town of Magic Beach on the California coast. As he waits to learn why he has been drawn there, he finds work as a cook and assistant to a once-famous film actor who, at eighty has become an eccentric with as long a list of fears as he has stories about Hollywood’s golden days.

Odd is having dreams of a red tide, vague but worrisome. By day he senses a free-floating fear in the air of the town, as if unleashed by the crashing waves. But nothing prepares him for the hard truth of what he will discover as he comes face to face with a form of evil that will test him as never before…

My take: 3 looks
This is the fourth book in the Odd Thomas series, and was just as cleverly written as the other three. I have never read another Koontz series (or standalone), but I am going to add his books to my TBR simply because of the writing style he exhibits in this series.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

• Words are plastic these days. Small loans made to desperate people at exorbitant rates are called payday advance. A cheesy hotel paired with a seedy casino is called a resort. Any assemblage of frenetic images, bad music, and incoherent plot is called a major motion picture.
• Malevolence and paranoia cohabit in a twisted mind. Bad men trust no one because they know the treachery of which they themselves are capable.
• Sometimes I am a mystery to myself.
• Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can.

See? Both humorous and poignant statements. That is the hallmark, I am finding, of these Odd Thomas books, and one thing that makes them such a pleasure to read.

This one ended a little abruptly for me. Who was Annamaria? What became of the baby she carried? Why were the men after her? Will we see Birdie Hopkins again? Did anyone else miss Ozzie?

Instead of being frustrated with the lack of answers, I am propelled to the next in the series. Koontz has never let me down before and there is no reason to suspect he will begin now.

Highly recommended.