Odd Hours is the fourth installment already of the Odd Thomas series started in 2003 and it sets itself up for a fifth offering that will be coming before too long, I am sure.
The entire story takes place during one evening, a span of about six hours. Odd Thomas finds himself in a town for reasons unknown to him, finds a mysterious pregnant woman whom he doesn’t know, and vows to protect her with his life for reasons she will not reveal. This chapter in Odd’s odd life begins with him meeting the unknown woman who has no last name, and ends with him driving out of town with the woman while still having no idea who she is, why she needs protection, and with no real destination in mind.
Enter book five.
The mysterious woman character is not even necessary in this story, makes a couple of guest appearances to make sure we don’t forget about her, and leaves the reader with a strong feeling of an unfinished story despite the fact that Odd manages to discover and thwart an evil attempt by powers unnamed to redesign the world order beginning with the destruction of several major cities in the United States, all in a six hour time frame.
This story raises more questions than it offers answers. Koontz’s descriptions of the flowers and trees and weather and such take up at least half the book. The other half is Odd using his unusual psychic abilities to track down and shoot the bad guys dead. But even with the villains all having fresh bullet holes in them, the mysterious pregnant woman still requests his safeguarding.
Having helped Elvis find his way to the ever after in the end of the third installment, he relies on the spirits of Frank Sinatra and (of course) a ghost dog named Boo to help him out of a few jams. But even though Odd manages to kill all the pawns in the evil scheme, we are allowed one slip of the tongue that mentions a Senator might be behind, or at least involved, in the plan to start a New Civil Order, yet no conspiracies or politicians, from our country or any other, including the origin of the ship delivering the nukes to the fumbling pawns of the plot, are otherwise ever even mentioned.
This book falls to third in my favor of the four Odd novels. The first one was one of my favorite Koontz novels when I read it. But later, in fact just a few weeks ago, my son and I were watching a movie, one that Dean had watched many times, we decided, The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere. I had told my son about Odd Thomas as we often discuss the books we read with each other, but he had not actually read any of the Odd Thomas novels himself. But at the same moment during The Mothman Prophecies, after a single particular line spoken by the expert that Richard Gere had sought out for some supernatural answers, my son and I looked at each other at said “Odd Thomas” almost simultaneously. Sure enough, a quick double checking of dates showed the Mothman appearing in 2002 and Odd Thomas appearing in 2003.
Just like the idea for The Good Guy comes directly from the movie Red Rock West with Nicolas Cage, Odd Thomas is a direct result of The Mothman Prophecies.
It makes me wonder how many other novels of Koontz’s are taken directly from movies that I haven’t happened to see. I hope Life Expectancy isn’t another rip-off being my current favorite Koontz novel.
That being said, despite the fact that Dean appears to be much less imaginative than he would like for everyone to believe when he talks about where he gets his ideas (which he does very often in his newsletters, all of which I read, and none of which mention the movies he is stealing his ideas from); and despite the fact that even with Trixie gone he can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t contain a hero dog or two, Dean Koontz is a very talented, descriptive writer and I enjoy his work because he makes it easy to visualize his story as he tells it.
His books are fast reads with large font and usually fairly fast paced. I read Odd Hours in just two evenings, enjoyed it, but was definitely left unfulfilled with the open-ended finish and all the questions about who this mysterious pregnant woman with no last name is and why she was even in the story to begin with.
Rarely are movie sequels as good as the originals and Odd Thomas falls into this category as well. I thoroughly enjoyed Odd Thomas in 2003 (although now hold a lot less respect for it since discovering, without question, where Koontz lifted the idea from); Forever Odd in 2005 felt like a waste of time; Brother Odd in 2006 was much better than the second in the series with a much more substantial story to tell, but still mostly just the same old stuff in new surroundings; and this latest effort falls somewhere between the second and third chapters of Odd’s odd life.
I suppose when you write as much as Koontz does, you need to dip your fingers into the wells of others to keep the stories coming.
If it sounds like I am being a little hard on the compulsive writer, it’s because I have always considered him one of my favorites. But as I have discovered a few of the sources for his stories, it feels a bit like seeing how the magician does a trick that you have always loved and discovering it was a lot simpler and less complex than you had ever thought it could be, or like going back to the circus for the first time as an adult and seeing the sadness and desperation behind the masks of the clowns that you hadn’t noticed as a child.
All in all, I give Odd Hours a 3 on the 5 star scale and will buy the fifth chapter when it comes out next year sometime, if for no other reason than to find out who this mysterious pregnant woman is that Odd has vowed to protect, and why she needs protecting. Koontz is a talented author and I do enjoy his writing, but I think he has been knocked down on the “favorite” list a few notches because he is much less original than I had previously thought. If you like Dean Koontz, I recommend Odd Hours to spend an evening or two with to pass the time, assuming you have been following the story from the beginning. But if you haven’t been following Odd Thomas since 2003, you aren’t missing much bypassing this long chapter.
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