Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas marks the latest in the author's line of psychological and paranormal thrillers.

Odd, which really is the hero's first name, is 20 years old, loves his girlfriend, takes great pride in his cooking and sees dead people.

Naturally, he uses his ability to help the dead move out of his small desert town and on to the other world.

Odd's situation becomes problematic because he is also able to foretell impending catastrophes via the appearances of little shadowy creatures that indicate death. When hundreds of them invade his town, Odd is caught up in trying to stop an imminent massacre.

With the deadpan narrative Odd uses to recount multiple deaths, the story is almost funny, like when he casually drops in an anecdote describing the time he almost drowned as he was chained to two corpses. Or the latent humor in a freak accident in which a little child was annihilated by a truck.

In these twisted ways, Koontz manages to save the novel from depressing deaths to almost upbeat ones.

Faced with poltergeists, looming deaths, his own childhood psychological scars and characters that seem just as crazy as he is, Odd's retrospective account sets the scene for terror after terror throughout the story.

With guest appearances from the ghost of Elvis and multiple horrific deaths recounted in a comically serious way, Odd Thomas excites just as much as it shocks and appalls.

-- Reviewed by Ali Gray