Content Warning: This guide contains discussions of graphic violence, extreme violence to women, sexual assault, child abuse and trauma caused by child abuse, child molestation, and death by suicide. The novel also contains depictions of mass shootings and references to terrorism and serial murderers. The novel contains depictions of mental health conditions and sometimes engages in stereotypes about them.

Odd Thomas is the protagonist of the novel. He is a 20-year-old fry cook in Pico Mundo, California, who can see the dead. The origin of his name, “Odd,” has multiple possible sources. It may have been a misspelling of “Todd,” or it might come from an uncle that he acknowledges may not even exist. His relationship with his divorced parents is strained. His relationship with his mother is particularly strained; she often emotionally manipulates him. Apart from his family, he has built his own life and family in the town. He is also the in-story writer of Odd Thomas, and he acknowledges his role as an unreliable narrator due to obfuscating certain facts from the reader. Odd is both a round character and a dynamic one, changing over the course of the novel.