Odd Hours

May 19, 2008
Quirky humor and an endearing narrative voice lift bestseller Koontz's winning fourth Odd Thomas novel (after "Brother Odd"), set in the small California community of Magic Beach (whose motto is Everyone a Neighbor, Every Neighbor a Friend). Thomas, a 21-year-old fry cook, takes his prophetic dreams or visions, which often foretell trouble, very seriously. When three male thugs approach Thomas and Annamaria, a pregnant friend of his, on a lonely pier, he finds that physical contact with one of the men triggers his fiery nightmares. Thomas's chivalric impulses soon put his life at risk, and when he finds that his adversaries are ostensibly employees of the town's beach department, he must work to stave off disaster without the assistance of the local authorities, some of whom have conspired with terrorists to smuggle nuclear weapons into the country. Sensitive portrayals of minor characters whose lives Thomas touches are a plus. "(May 20)" .

May 1, 2008
The fourth adventure of Odd Thomas, the young man haunted by thedeceased who can also foresee potential murderous disaster, may not be the besthis eponymous initial outing isbut darned if it isnt the most purely entertaining. Observing Koontzs SOP, it starts with a bang and goes like a house afire straight through to the penultimate chapter (the last chapter cleans up). Odd goes out for a walk on the boardwalk to find the Lady of the Bell, a pregnant girl roughly his own age (21), who has appeared to him in a troubling dream. He succeeds, but then a blond gorilla and two skinny redheaded guys packing heat show up. When Odd touches the gorilla, he gets a flash of the dream. So does the gorilla, who is immediately, murderously suspicious, so Odd, after sending the girl packing, takes a header off the boardwalk. For most of the rest of the book, Odd flees the three baddies, discovering that the local police chief and a liberal minister are in cahoots with them, until he reverses the procedure to prevent very serious destruction, indeed, aimed at regime change in America. Choosing so grandiose an objective for Odd, Koontz forges the kind of sweeping melodrama, complete with screwball laughs, nail-biting moments, and surprises, that is the bedrock of American narrative entertainment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

May 19, 2008
David Aaron Baker gives a guileless, everyman sheen to Koontz's unusual protagonist-a fry cook named Odd capable of contacting the dead, both famed (Frank Sinatra) and otherwise. Baker alternates between Odd's aw-shucks dialogue and a more dramatically nuanced narrator's voice. The result is a solid, if not overwhelmingly memorable, rendering of the latest in Koontz's ever-growing oeuvre. The audio's director, Lisa Cahn, does an excellent job keeping the production's pace at a steady gallop. A Bantam hardcover (Reviews, Apr.21).