Odd Thomas is a 20 year old young man with the head and experience of a 50 year old. During the course of his average day as a fry cook at the Pico Mundo Grill, he sees dead people and bodachs.

Dead people I think you might know about, but bodachs are black, smoky animals that only he can see and they start to sniff around humans when a major "violent" catastrophe is about to befall them. The dead people are simply hangers on who can't move to the next world for whatever reason. They can't talk but can try and communicate in other ways. Odd's most continuous visitor is Elvis no less, who loves to hang around him and ponder.

When Odd Thomas sees the bodachs he has to act instinctively to save the people/person involved, even though he will usually have no idea what is going to happen. So when he sees a guy in the Grill who he feels very uneasy about, with an entourage of bodachs following him, he has to investigate before something very nasty happens.

I really, really enjoyed this book. It is the first in a series of four books and one I had been putting off for some time as I had a funny feeling about it, but biting the bullet and getting stuck in I whizzed through the story greedily.

I adore Odd Thomas! The man is so strange yet lives his life so sensibly that you can't help but be endeared to him. He has a girlfriend - Stormy Llewellyn - who is absolutely everything to him and vice versa, and their passion for each other is what drives Odd as much as anything else. The fact that Elvis loves him too works for me. As bizarre as it sounds writing it down here, it seems perfectly natural after about the second chapter that the King of Rock & Roll should be hanging around a little desert town with Odd Thomas!

This is a tale of super-natural beings but it didn't seem sci-fi at all, or particularly scary either to be honest. It was a good "teeth in" thriller sort of book and with the threat to the residents of Pico Mundo being human, made it all the more real and less super-natural for me which was a really good mix.

Koontz has thought through Odd's character so well, and you get snippets of his life growing up - (poor Odd!) - which really help with character development, and all add up to make him the person he is.

I would highly recommend this read and then the continuation of the set, I'm so glad I did.