A mystery in Magic Beach, California has lured Odd to the small town by the ocean -- but is it the call of the deep or the cry of the desperate? Odd Thomas knows more about the mysteries of the universe than the rest of us. He can see the lingering dead. He has learned that there are no coincidences. Even in chaos, there is order, purpose, and strange meaning. Intuition has brought Odd Thomas to the quaint town of Magic Beach on the California coast. As he waits to learn why he has been drawn to Magic Beach, he has found work as cook and assistant to a once-famous film actor who, at eighty, has become an eccentric with a long a list of fears. Odd is having dreams of a red tide, vague but worrisome. But nothing prepares him for the hard truth of what he will discover. For in Magic Beach, he will come face to face with a form of evil that will test him as never before.