Deeply Odd (Odd Thomas #6) by Dean Koontz

Koontz returns to writing about a character he clearly has deep affection for in his sixth Odd Thomas book.  You don't need to have read the previous five to enjoy Deeply Odd but it does work with them.

Odd wakes to the sound of a motionless bell ringing, a bell worn around his neck that summons him to fulfil whatever task awaits him.  He leaves his unconventional household, the mysterious Annamaria who has appeared heavily pregnant for many years, the deathless child Tim rescued in Odd's previous outing Odd Apocalypse, and two dogs, a golden retriever named Rapunzel and Boo, a ghost German shepherd.  Walking downtown to buy jeans and socks he is drawn to a large truck and a confrontation with its rhinestone clad owner.  Odd receives a terrible vision that this sinister man will shortly murder three young children by immolating them and knows he has to stop him.  Cue a pursuit across the deserts of America with Mrs Edie Fisher, a mysterious old lady in a limousine, the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock, monsters and 17 children in desperate peril.

Yet behind all this Odd senses a larger purpose looming, there are glimpses of an apocalyptic second reality lying alongside our own, a sense that the story arc of the Odd Thomas books is coming to a crisis, and there is, as ever in Koontz, horror and hope.

I enjoyed the humour, Odd is who he is because of his humility, his sense of humour and his faith in his beloved girlfriend Stormy, dead 18 months, and the world beyond our own that she has gone to ahead of him.