A fry cook who sees the dead
Odd Thomas began as a Dean Koontz novel published in 2003, and the setup is almost perversely modest: a twenty-year-old short-order cook in the fictional California desert town of Pico Mundo can see the spirits of the recently dead and the bodachs, dark phantoms that gather wherever mass violence is about to happen. He cannot communicate with the dead verbally. He has to figure out what they need through intuition and detective work. It is simultaneously a supernatural thriller, a love story, and a meditation on fate.
The hook worked. The novel sold millions of copies and launched a series of seven novels plus a standalone novella trilogy (Odd Interlude, released in three digital parts in 2012) that Koontz completed in 2015 with Saint Odd. Along the way the story moved into comics, with three manga-influenced graphic novels illustrated by Queenie Chan (with Fred Van Lente illustrating the second volume). A feature film arrived in 2013, directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Anton Yelchin in a performance that made the character's warmth and wit feel entirely real. The film sat unreleased for nearly two years after its producers sued over failed distribution financing, finally reaching US audiences in early 2014. It never got a wide theatrical release, but it found its audience on streaming and became a genuine cult object.
No television series or game has been produced. What exists is a focused body of work: seven novels, a novella trilogy, three graphic novels, and one film.
Every version of Odd Thomas
The source novels, graphic novels, and film adaptation
Odd Thomas across the years
- 2003Debut novel published by Bantam Books Odd Thomas
- 2005Second novel continues the series Forever
- 2006Third novel: Odd visits a monastery
- 2008Fourth novel: Odd on the California coast Odd Hours
- 2008First graphic novel, art by Queenie Chan
- 2010Second graphic novel, art by Fred Van Lente
- 2012Third graphic novel, written with Landry Q. Walker, art by Queenie Chan
- 2012Odd Interlude novella trilogy released digitally; fifth full novel published Odd Apocalypse
- 2013Sixth novel; film directed by Stephen Sommers completed
- 2013Film premieres at international festivals; US release delayed by distribution financing lawsuit Odd Thomas
- 2014Film reaches US VOD and limited theatrical after Image Entertainment acquires rights Odd Thomas
- 2015Series concludes with the seventh and final novel
The definitive version is the original novel
The 2003 novel is where everything works best. Koontz wrote it in tight first person, and Odd's voice, self-deprecating, quietly funny, carrying real grief, is the engine the whole series runs on. The plotting is more economical than most of his other work, and the ending lands with the kind of force that makes you sit with the book closed for a moment before you put it down. Every other version is in some way a response to or extension of what this book established. Start here.
The film is the overlooked version
Anton Yelchin's performance in the 2013 film is the best argument the adaptation has for itself. He plays Odd as genuinely gentle and sad rather than quirky for its own sake, and Addison Timlin as Stormy Llewellyn gives the romance real weight. Willem Dafoe as Police Chief Porter adds a layer of laconic authority that the book implies but the film makes visible. The movie got buried by its legal troubles and never found a theatrical audience, but it is a faithful, well-constructed adaptation of the first novel. The ending, if you have not read the book, will land hard.
If you love Odd Thomas: supernatural detectives and psychic heroes
Stories about ordinary people carrying an extraordinary and unwanted gift
If you love Odd Thomas: small-town horror with a human center
Genre stories where the setting is as important as the supernatural
If you love Odd Thomas: reluctant heroes carrying impossible burdens
Stories about people who did not ask to be responsible for the dead or the lost
