Brother Odd

Brother Odd is a novel by Dean Koontz, published in 2006. The novel is the third book in Koontz's series focusing on a young man named Odd Thomas.

Plot summary

The novel begins seven months after Forever Odd. During that time, Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew's Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. After Odd sees a shade-like bodach - portending great disaster for the abbey - one of the monks goes missing, and Odd is attacked by a mysterious assailant. As he searches for the missing monk, Odd hears a mysterious noise in a great snowstorm, and later sees an intricate, shifting pattern of bones against a window.

While looking for a body among the disabled children at the school, Odd hears from a man with Down's syndrome named Jacob, about the "Neverwas". Odd, on entering the bell tower to silence a poltergeist who rings bells, sees an apparition that resembles the traditional image of Death. By now the bodachs have multiplied, and Odd plans to bring the monks to the school to protect the children. He is suddenly drawn by a psychic premonition, and discovers the missing monk dead in a cooling tower, acting as a cocoon for another creature made of shifting bones.

Rodion Romanovich, the abbey's other guest, meets Odd in the garage to pick up the monks. Odd, suspicious of Romanovich, intends to leave him in the abbey, although he takes one sport utility vehicle (SUV) full of monks before Odd can stop him. On the way there, Romanovich's SUV is turned over by a bone-creature, and Brother Knuckles, Odd's confidant, runs into it with the other plow. Back at the school, Odd and Romanovich are able to determine that Jacob's father, the Neverwas, is John Heineman, a monk at the abbey known as Brother John and a former physicist who experimented with reality.

Odd and Romanovich, actually a National Security Agency agent sent to spy on Brother John, venture back into the storm to find John's research lab. When they find him, Brother John reveals that he has created a computer model of the innermost fabric of reality. He believes that reality is created by thought, and has proved it by tuning the room to his thoughts. If he thinks something, it will be, and in that way, he created the bone-monsters and the Death apparition. Odd and Romanovich attempt to convince Brother John otherwise, but instead, he sets his Death spirit on them. As the monks defend the school from the bone-monsters, Romanovich is able to shoot John, killing him and all his creations.

Later, Odd decides to leave the abbey, but as he rides down the highway back to his hometown, psychic magnetism pulls him out of the car, where the book ends as he walks down the highway toward the unknown. After three adventures, Elvis Presley finally crosses over. Odd and the dog continue along together, only to be united moments later with the ghost of Frank Sinatra.