How do you make sure a crime never happens? Thats the critical question facing Odd Thomas, the young man with a unique ability to commune with restless spirits and help them find justice and peace. But this time its the living, three helpless innocents, who will be brutally executed unless Odd can intervene in time. The potential victims and where they can be found remain a mystery. The only thing Odd knows for sure is who the killer will be: the homicidal stranger who tried to shoot him dead in a small-town parking lot. With the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock riding shotgun and a network of unlikely allies, Odd embarks on an interstate game of cat and mouse with his sinister quarry. He will soon learn that his adversary possesses abilities that may surpass his own and serves infinitely more formidable foes, with murder a mere prelude to much deeper designs. Traveling across a landscape haunted by portents of impending catastrophe, Odd draws ever closer to the dark heart of his long journey-and, perhaps, to the bright light beyond.