Short order cook who lives in a small desert town and….sees dead people..
Odd Thomas, great book, great character but why no movie? In 2008 at the San Diego Comic Con, writer Dean Koontz announced that his creation, Odd Thomas was moving forward to be filmed as a feature film. According to an unknown source, he went so far as to say that the script was so good that he fell over in his chair because it was “so perfect”. He also added that an unnamed actor had signed on for the title role… It’s 2010 and I’ve heard nothing further about this project.
Here are my reasons why this would make a great movie….
With a name like Odd, you know this story will be interesting. Whether Odd is working as a short order cook in the town of Pico Mundo or if he is trying to figure out why the ghost of Elvis likes to hang around him, Odd just goes about his day to day like the rest of us. That’s what I like about this story, the main character doesn’t want to be famous or rich, he just wants to be..Odd.
The first book starts off with Odd being approached by the ghost of a little girl who was murdered recently, the dead can’t speak so she leads Odd (who has the ability to “psychically” communicate with the dead) to the man that killed her, Odd takes care of the situation and in doing so we are treated to what’s to come. Odd is odd but the ones around him are odder..
A great cast of characters, his girlfriend Stormy Llewellyn is quite possibly one of the most interesting characters I’ve read in a book in a VERY long time. She is an ice-cream shop employee who sees this life as a “boot camp” for the next, followed by “the service” and finally the final life of rewards. She is also one of the only people, besides Little Ozzie and Chief Wyatt Porter, that know about what she calls Odds “psychic magnetism”.
Along the way you are also introduced to Little Ozzie. Given the nickname “little” for his opposite stature, Ozzie has published quite a few detective novels, has a sixth finger on his left hand and owns a cat by the name of Terrible Chester. This cat is supposed to be over 50 years old and doesn’t think too highly of Odd, though Ozzie does. The interactions between Odd and Ozzie never grow stale and are written almost as if it was autobiographical.
Not only can Odd see the dead but he sees terrifying creatures he calls “bodochs” which look like shadowy figures that appear only during the times of someone’s death or a great disaster. These characters appear quite a bit in this book as soon as mysterious man comes to town with quite a big number of bodachs following him everywhere he goes. Odd names this man, “The Fungus Man”.
I won’t go into every detail about this book but if you haven’t read it and you like good banter, horror and a unique story, then I highly recommend it.
If done right, this would make such a good movie. It’s got characters that are well fleshed out that you actually care about, an original story (it’s not the Sixth Sense at all), villains of a supernatural and natural nature and most importantly....it’s not a REBOOT!!
If anyone has read this first book, tell me what you think, Movie? T.V. show? None of the above?