ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz

Originally published in 2003

Coke vs. Pepsi. 

Kleenex vs. Puffs. 

McDonald's vs. Burger King.

Stephen King vs. Dean Koontz. 

There is a "name brand" that defines almost every field. Let's face it, in the literary world, Stephen King is the master of the horror field. Dean Koontz is clearly the second place guy, but he is second place. I have followed that pattern in my own reading. I have easily read two dozen Stephen King books and perhaps ten Dean Koontz books. Nothing wrong with Dean Koontz, just like there's nothing wrong with Pepsi, Puffs or Burger King.

I was aware of the Odd Thomas series - they're in all of the book stores and the name certainly gets your attention. But, I never was tempted to pick the first one up and get started until last week.

Odd Thomas is a twenty year old resident of Pico Mundo, a suburban town in the Southern California desert. Odd (yes, that's his real name) certainly lives up to his name. He is a gentle soul that has a few very, very close friends of all ages. He works as a fry cook, aspires to sell tires and lives for his girlfriend who works at the ice cream stand in the mall. Oh, he also talks to Elvis Presley's ghost on a regular basis.

You see, Odd Thomas sees spirits. He sees ghosts that refuse to move onto to whatever comes after this life. He sees evil spirits. He can find people with a skill he calls "psychic magnetism". He can speak with the ghosts but he can't hear them - it would be crazy to think that you can hear ghosts.

Odd is a gentle soul and takes great care to never use his powers for gain. He was raised by selfish adults but, luckily, he learned from them that the world needs more people that give. Only a few people really understand what he can do and those people watch out for him and worry over him because Odd's unique set of skills often lead him to very dangerous places...

Clearly, with this first book Dean Koontz was building a world for Odd Thomas to inhabit. There is plenty of room for stories about Odd's family, his relationship with the local author, with the police chief that he thinks of as a father figure and even Elvis Presley.

Will I go on and explore Odd's world even more? I am not sure. Odd is likable and sympathetic, especially with the end that surprised me. Who knows, maybe it's time to do a little Dean Koontz binge reading because sometimes the second banana can come up with something unique and clever and steal some thunder from the "name brand" and make them worth another look.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Odd Thomas.

THE COMFORT of BLACK (audiobook) by Carter Wilson

Audio version released in January of 2016 by LLC Cherry Publishing

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Originally published by Oceanview Publishing in August of 2015.

Read by Rebecca Roberts

Duration: 9 hours, 21 minutes

Unabridged

Hannah Parks, the protagonist of The Comfort of Black is a survivor. She grew up in an incredibly verbally abusive home and watched her mother be physically abused by her father on a regular basis. But, one day, she fought back and now her father is in jail and she is married to a tech genius whose start-up has become a major corporation.

But, Hannah and her husband have been growing apart. When she hears him dreaming about raping a woman and discovers a secret porn file on his computer she confronts him only to have him fly into a violent rage. She leaves him only to have him try to kidnap her.

But, a man named Black intervenes. A man she doesn't even know kidnaps her away from the kidnappers and now Hannah's life really starts to disintegrate...

If you love a book with a lot of plot twists, well this is your book. Personally, I thought the book had so many plot twists that it got to the point of ridiculousness and I hung around to the very end just to see how ridiculous it got. The answer? Extremely.

For me, a couple of plot twists are fine. For example, in the entire original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes IV to VI) there is really just one big plot twist - Darth Vader's true identity. 6 hours of movie, 700 pages of novelization - one big plot twist.

This book had plot twist after plot twist after plot twist and it just got old. Was anything in this book as it seemed? Some may think it clever. I think it is a one trick pony act - the story gets a bit stale - throw in a plot twist to shake everything back up again. Her husband is not the man she thought he was. Her rescuer is not the man she thought he was. Hannah is not who she thought she was. And so on and so on and so on.

I won't reveal any more than that because maybe this sounds like something you would like but it sure wasn't my style.

I listened to this as an audiobook and Rebecca Roberts did an excellent job as the reader. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I am sure I have not run across her before. I am equally sure that she will become a popular choice for authors and publishers - she was the bright spot as a I listened to this audiobook.

Note: I received a free copy of this audiobook for review purposes.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Comfort of Black.

BADLANDS: A NOVEL (Cassie Dewell #3) by C.J. Box

Published in July of 2015

Cassie Dewell was the lead character in 2013's The Highway, a gritty novel with a truly creepy bad guy. Dewell is a young widow who lives with her wacky mother and her son. Dewell makes the move from Wyoming to North Dakota in Badlands. This is a good move by all accounts - there is a substantial raise, a promotion in rank and it lets Dewell get out of a bad work situation detailed in The Highway.

A fracking operation in North Dakota.
Photo by Joshua Doubek.

Grimstad, North Dakota is in the center of the new oil boom. Thanks to "fracking",  it exploded from a little farm town to one of the fastest growing economic centers in the world. It has become the kind of town where anyone can get a job but no one can get a place to sleep and you have to wait for half an hour just to order at the local McDonald's.

The local sheriff has a problem. He knows that gangs are moving in to sell drugs and run prostitutes and he's pretty sure that one of his deputies is helping them. But, he can't be sure because he barely knows his police force. He's and old hand and so are a couple of his deputies but most of them have been hired from all over the country as the oil boom hit town.

On top of that, Dewell is involved in an ongoing investigation into the kidnappings, rapes and murders involving a long haul trucker from the last book. 

I thought this was a fascinating book. The reality of a modern oil boom town was simply fascinating. Cassie's ongoing pursuit of the Lizard King continues to add a sense of foreboding to the series.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Badlands: A Novel.

RECKLESS (Ty Hauck #3) by Andrew Gross

Slow Going At First.

Published in 2010.

Reckless is all about how quickly the world's stock markets can be played by a few bad actors who don't particularly care about making money so much as they care about wreaking havoc, bit this book takes a very long time to get started.

Hauck is in the suburbs of New York City. He is working for a corporation as a security consultant, meaning he investigates people the company may work with and gets involved with internet breaches and the like. Hauck's company is investigating an big-time investor with a hidden past. But, Hauck has a personal connection to the murders of a Wall Street broker and his family and soon finds a connection to a third murder that ties in all three investigations. But, is his company interested in what he finds? Is anyone?

The book is set in the midst of the Wall Street collapse in 2008 that kicked off the Great Recession. Gross does a great job of folding in his fictional companies with the big names that were at the heart of the mess. He also demonstrates one of the ways our economy is vulnerable to foreign manipulation, an idea laid out very clearly in Kevin Freeman's non-fiction book Secret Weapon.

Unfortunately, this book takes a solid 150 pages to really get moving. Once it gets going it is quite the rocket ship, but those first pages are a bit of a slog.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Reckless.

PIRATE LATITUDES by Michael Crichton

Published in 2009.

The year is 1665 in Pirate Latitudes and the English colony of Jamaica is surrounded by a constellation of Spanish colonies. The Caribbean is in a near-perpetual state of war as English privateers attack Spanish treasure galleons hauling literally tons of New World silver and gold to Spain.

Charles Hunter is the captain of an English privateer ship named Cassandra (or, he is simply a pirate when Spain and England are not at war). He has learned that Spain has a fortress on a remote island called Matanceros to protect ships that attempt, but fail to make the trip to Spain. They cannot return to their port of origin alone. In fact, the less time they are alone and exposed to privateers, the better. So, Spain has built an impregnable fortress to protect such ships. 

Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

At least it is supposed to be impregnable. Hunter is very sure that he has figured out a way that the perfect team can infiltrate the fort and then take the ship that it is supposed to protect. And, he has just learned that a ship full of treasure has taken refuge in the bay at Matanceros - just waiting for him to come and take it....

After Michael Crichton passed away in 2008 this completed and previously unknown book was found on his computer. This novel is a complete story but it is just feels like it was just not done. Parts of it hum along and feel like a Crichton story. There is intensity, science, and mystery. For example, the hurricane scene and the cannon scene and the abandoned island. Those scenes are all together and they feel like they have been worked over with a lot of care. Other scenes, such as the last few chapters, feel like a first or second draft. This makes for an uneven read, which really can't be helped. Crichton fans will want to read the book but they will wonder how truly great this short novel could have been if he had only had the time to really finish it.

I rate this novel 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Pirate Latitudes.

JIM BECKWOURTH: NEGRO MOUNTAIN MAN by Harold W. Felton

Originally printed in 1966

As you can tell by the title, Jim Beckwourth: Negro Mountain Man has a hopelessly out-of-date title. When it was written in 1966, the term "negro" was still considered to be acceptable, of course.

Jim Beckwourth (1798-1866) was born in Virginia and moved out to the frontier, roughly in the St. Louis area, before he moved out on his own. He apprenticed as a blacksmith but didn't really pursue that career. Instead, he set off as part of larger expeditions and quickly earned a reputation for being tough, fair and honest. And, perhaps most important, he was considered to be dependable in an environment where almost nothing was dependable.

Beckwourth's skin color did not seem to hurt him any as he trapped beaver, scouted for military expeditions and explored the American West. He even served in the Second Seminole War in Florida. It seems that real talent was valued a lot more than a man's race.

But, the bulk of this book deals with Beckwourth's time with the Crow Indians. He claimed that he became a chief and told many tales of his adventures among the Crow. 

Jim Beckwourth

Felton goes out of his way to be fair to Beckwourth in a time when the idea of racial equality and African-American heroes could be controversial. This makes Felton's running commentary on Native Americans all the more jarring. He calls them "redskins" (p. 36), "squaws" (p. 43), "thieving and murderous Indians" (p.55) and more. Once again, this book is a product of its time and cannot be judged by modern standards of acceptable speech, but it was jarring. Be prepared if you read the book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Jim Beckwourth: Negro Mountain Man.

 I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 while issuing no judgment on the racial commentary for reasons listed above.

THE BONE FEUD (audiobook) by Wynne McLaughlin

Published by Wynne E. McLaughlin

Read by Charles Hinckley
Duration: 4 hours, 15 minutes
Unabridged

A lot of people don't know that the end of the classic Cowboy era was the beginning of a dinosaur rush. Paleontologists went out West and found all sorts of skeletons and shipped them back East to be installed in museums. Reputations were made based on who could find the biggest and most exotic fossils.

Edward Cope with a fossil

Two scientists, Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh tried their best to outdo one another as their teams explore the American West. Sometimes they just compete, sometimes they actually try to hurt the other guy's operations. 

The book is told from the point of view of an old Western guide/stagecoach robber who joined with one of the scientists and helped him navigate the landscape and local politics and is now telling the story to a reporter.

This story was adapted from a movie script. It listens like a "movie of the week"-type fun western. Nothing too serious, but you learn a little something along the way. Charles Hinckley does a good job with a multitude of voices and accents and he keeps the story moving in a lively manner.

I rate this audiobook 4 out of 5 stars.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bone Feud.