The second installment in Koontz's Odd Thomas series continues the adventures of the psychic young man whose ability to see ghosts enables him to help solve crimes.

Forever Odd, the second installment in what Dean Koontz promises will be an ongoing epic, is one of his best stories to date. It chronicles the life of Odd Thomas, a short-order cook with extraordinary abilities who lives in the Southern California town of Pico Mundo on the edge of the Mojave Desert. As his name implies, Odd is not your usual cook—or usual human being, for that matter. He possesses an unusual gift: the ability to see the dead walking among us. These walking specters are drawn to him because of this gift. He can talk to them, but they can only respond through gestures, facial expressions and body language. Odd believes that they cling to this world in a state of limbo, stuck as if to a spider’s web, because of strong emotions—anger, sorrow, despair—that are always connected to their untimely death. He also believes that they cannot leave until some form of reconciliation occurs. It’s not a new concept in supernatural literature, this idea that the dead cannot leave due to the strength of emotions attached to their death. But Koontz uses this concept as a backdrop to develop some of his most vibrant and endearing characters.

The strength of Koontz’s storytelling usually centers on his unique ability to create interesting characters. Odd Thomas is supported and sometimes guided in his adventures by a supporting cast that includes Chief Wyatt Porter, Pico Mundo’s grizzled, veteran police chief; Terri Stambaugh, Odd’s boss at the grill who is a fast talking, die-hard Elvis Presley fan; P. Oswald Boone, an author and Odd’s best friend, who is also a four-hundred pound mystery novelist with a clairvoyant cat; and the ghost of The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley himself.

The story opens with Odd awakening to find the spirit of a man he knows well, Dr. Wilbur Jessup, standing beside his bed. He rises to investigate and discovers the doctor’s body bludgeoned to death and his son missing. The son is Danny, Odd’s close friend who suffers from ontogenesis imperfecta, a crippling brittle bone disease. He suspects that Danny has been kidnapped from his home, possibly by his birth father, who was recently released from prison. We are immediately drawn into the adventure as Odd sets off in pursuit of Danny’s kidnappers.

We find that Odd’s special powers also stretch into other realms of the psychic. His “psychic magnetism” allows him to find people or unseen places by focusing on a mental image of them. He follows the psychic trail of Danny down into an underground, labyrinthine drainage system, and eventually emerges again far out in the desert. Standing on the edge of the desert, Odd places a call to Sheriff Porter, a father figure to Odd who possesses a firm but still uncertain belief in the young man’s extraordinary abilities. Odd has helped the sheriff solve cases before and found answers when none seemed evident using conventional police tactics. After Odd briefly updates the sheriff regarding the case, their conversation turns to the current mission in the desert. The following is a piece of this conversation recounted through Odd’s narrative:

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