quality literature: odd thomas

i've never much cared for suspense and mysteries beyond dabbling in nancy drew and the bobbsey twins in elementary school.  and i had a narrow window of opportunity with horror.  it wasn't until my very late teen years that i could handle that genre at all.  i remember "watching" a freddie kruger flick behind a pillow at a sleepover once in high school, but by college i was able to watch "silence of the lambs" in the big theatre although i did sleep with a butcher knife under my pillow that night.  i enjoyed horror flicks throughout my twenties and early thirties, but when g came along he seemed to restructure my psyche so that i have come full circle, barely tolerating horror film trailers out the corner of my eye and not even considering watching one in its entirety.  can't hardly handle the genre in written form either.  i didn't get around to reading the twilight series till the fourth was out a friend convinced me they weren't "that" scary.

all this to say that i read two or three dean koontz novels back in the late 80s when he was reaching megastardom.  these handed to me by the middle sister who thrives on horror and suspense.  i liked them fine.  i would categorize them as the horror version of my trashy romance novels though.  entertaining, yes, but not a great deal of depth.  i obviously hadn't read any dean koontz in the last 8 years and 7 months (g is already telling everyone that he's "almost" nine).  but my older sister has been reading my blog and handed me "odd thomas" when i was in florida last week.  i really like it when people know what i like and what i'm looking for and hand it to me.  it saves me the trouble of looking for myself.

in "odd thomas" dean koontz has matured as a writer.  i wish that i had been able to slow down and enjoy his words more, but the driving plot and need to "find out" pushed me on.  while this book is suspenseful and has a bit of the fear factor in it, the heart of the story is the hero and his eclectic collection of quirky firiends.  dean koontz weaves their stories and personalities together seamlessly with beautiful wordplay.  while it isn't exactly a "happy" book, it's a joy to read.

i also noticed while writing this that "odd thomas" has become a series and there are three more in the collection.  hmmm.  wonder if my sister knows this.  wonder if she has them.  wonder if they're as good as the first.  hmmm . . .