Review by Wayne C. Rogers
Bantam Books, 2013, $28.00, 332pp
First thing I want to do is to thank Geno McGahee for inviting me to write for his website and with his many talented team members. Though Scared Stiff Reviews deals with horror movies, Geno allows his staff to write about whatever grabs their attention and has graciously permitted me to do book reviews here as well as movie and DVD reviews.
This is fantastic because I used to write book reviews for The Las Vegas Review Journal’s book blog, The Book Nook. This was a way of getting information out about new books that were not in the horror genre by such authors as Joe R. Lansdale, Tom Piccirilli, James Lee Burke, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, the late Robert B. Parker, John Irving, Don Winslow (Savages & The Kings of Cool), and many others that I enjoy reading. The Book Nook, however, closed up shop in March due to staff shortages at the newspaper. Now, I once again have an outlet for those reviews, including Owen King’s (yes, that’s right, Stephen King’s son) newest novel, Double Feature. I just have to finish reading it.
Dean Koontz’ newest novel, Deeply Odd, comes out at the end of May in hardcover. I’m a big fan of Dean’s and absolutely love his Odd Thomas novels. I’m also impatiently waiting for the new Odd Thomas movie to hit the theaters this year, hoping it will live up to great series Dean Koontz has created.
Anyway, be prepared for reviews from me dealing with current novels, interesting novels, and reviews of older books that I read and enjoyed years before such as The Shining and Salem’s Lot. I have a review ready to go of John Irving’s newest paperback, which may also be his most controversial novel to date, The One Person. I had nowhere to send it with The Book Nook closed, so now I can place it here, which is just the way it should be since Irving is a New England writer.
So, I hope you enjoy the review of Deeply Odd.
Okay, I managed to snag an Advance Reading copy of the new “Odd Thomas” novel, Deeply Odd, by Dean Koontz, which is coming out in hardcover at the end of May. That, as they say, was a miracle.
In this story, Odd Thomas takes up the sword again after the adventures of Odd Apocalypse have quieted down. Something draws Odd away from Annamaria and their tiny cottage in the coastal community along California’s Pacific Highway. When Odd feels the unconscious urge to take a walk into town, he soon finds himself being past on the highway by a black tractor trailer rig that causes alarm bells to go off inside his head. Chasing after it on foot, he soon locates the rig parked in the lot of a grocery store and confronts the driver, a white haired, blue-eyed cowboy in snake-skin boots. Odd Thomas has an instant vision of the man murdering children by burning them to death with a flamethrower. He instinctively understands that he’s also the only one who can save them.
And so the drama begins.
Odd Thomas barely keeps himself from being killed by the driver and is forced to go after him when the man takes off. Then, through a series of circumstances, a black limousine happens upon Odd Thomas in the middle of the highway, and the elderly lady driving the car, Edie Fischer, offers to give him a much-needed lift. Edie isn’t an ordinary person. Like Odd, she has certain powers and uses them to deter evil as well.
In their search for the driver of the tractor trailer rig, Edie and Odd head across the center of California. They discover information about some missing children and also take the time to arm themselves with weapons, knowing a full-scale battle is just around the corner.
Before the end is reached, Odd Thomas will find himself turning into something he despises…a killing machine. It’s the only way he can stop others from destroying the weak and innocent. Luckily for Odd he not only has Edie at his side, but also the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch’s spirit will guide Odd through the dark turmoil of destruction. And, if that isn’t enough, Odd Thomas learns of a parallel universe where a being who favors him in appearance is also hungry for his life.
Dean Koontz has a unique way of capturing evil in his stories that makes me think he knows more than he admits. In other words, I believe he hits the nail on the head with each outing, portraying the essence of evil in all its vile and mysterious forms. He certainly creates villains that could have come right out of the Sunday newspaper. The author has been doing this since he wrote False Memory, and I feel that at some time in his life he must have came face to face with pure evil and survived the confrontation. That’s how he’s able to write so clearly and precisely about it.
Another important factor is that Dean Koontz inevitably gives us hope at the end of Deeply Odd by letting us know there are good people are out there, striving to fight the negative changes erupting within our mist. These people are like a ray of sunshine, guiding us into the bright light of the future and all of its mystery. This is when I wish Odd Thomas was real and I could sit down with him for an hour to shoot the shit and to talk about what’s happening. Maybe have some fluffy pancakes, too.
Like the other “Odd Thomas” novels, Deeply Odd is pure entertainment that’s filled with stark suspense and a large number of belly laughs. Like the best novels out there, it includes bits and pieces of deep insight into our magical world and the things that transpire around us on a daily basis. I believe Dean Koontz is ahead of his time in how he’s able to portray this by weaving it into the structure of his fiction.
I certainly loved the way all the characters in Deeply Odd were created. Dean always manages to keep a sense of mystery about each one even though they seem as familiar to you as your next-door neighbor. He makes each character (both the good and bad ones) a little off kilter. This keeps the reader constantly on his toes as he struggles to guess what’s going to happen next, which usually proves to be a useless endeavor.
I won’t call this particular piece of information a plot spoiler, but just to let the readers know, everything is coming around in a full circle. Odd Thomas is being led back to Pico Mundo to be reunited with Stormy Llewellyn. Deeply Odd gives you a hint of what to expect in the very near future. It’s definitely going to be BIG, and it will most certainly end the series.
Deeply Odd is highly recommended to those who are as deeply odd as I and the author are. You can’t go wrong with Odd Thomas at your side, and don’t forget, the movie of Odd Thomas is due out soon, whatever soon means.
