I'm back-and-forth on Koontz most of the time. When he's on, he can craft a great novel, but when he's not he sticks to the same formulas time and again. This book, to his credit, avoids those formulas and gives us a story which, while not blisteringly original, is at least off the path he usually treads. Odd Thomas is a young man with a strange gift -- the ability to see the "lingering dead," ghosts who often recruit him to help fix some unresolved trauma from their life. Odd has other gifts as well -- rare precognitive dreams, a sort of "psychic magnetism" which brings him to anyone he seeks and the ability to see dark spirits he calls Bodachs that swarm upon scenes of violence. In this book, Odd goes forth to track down a man the Bodachs have taken a particular interest in, a man with a penchant for scenes of horror and their perpetrators. The way this story is crafted is a bit offputting -- Odd's first-person narration is often handled in short, choppy paragraphs that feel as though they were written by a teenager that hasn't quite learned how to smooth out a transition yet. He frequently refers to previous adventures as well, and does it SO frequently that it felt like I was reading a book several installments into a series (in fact, it is the first -- a sequel is already available). The twist ending was choreographed quite early as well. Still, the characters are propelled by their sheer bizarre nature and the plot is fed by the same into a book that's ultimately entertaining, if not enthralling.