Dead people try to communicate with a short-order cook, who serves as a small desert town's reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy with a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill, and he is rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn.

"Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death. But when a childhood friend disappears, Odd discovers something worse than a dead body and embarks on a heart-stopping battle of will and wits with an enemy...

Odd journeys through California and Nevada after a vision about the murders of three children, an effort throughout which he befriends a series of eccentric helpers who become allies in a battle against a sociopath and a network of killers.

"It's Halloween in Pico Mundo, California, and there's a whiff of something wicked in the autumn air. While the town prepares for its annual festivities, young fry cook Odd Thomas can't shake the feeling that make-believe goblins and ghouls aren't the only things on the prowl. And he should know, since he can see what others cannot: the spirits of the restless dead. But even his frequent visitor, the specter of Elvis Presley, can't seem to point Odd...