Dave Zeltserman’s BAD THOUGHTS adds a dash of horror to the crime genre. The horror never overtakes the novel, but it’s used sparingly and with great balance, never overdoing it with the gore or delving into the over-the-top category that plagues many a story.
Bill Shannon is a troubled cop living his life in Cambridge, Mass. When he was 13, he witnessed his mother being killed, and needless to say, this has stuck with him ever since, causing him to have a yearly weeklong blackout whenever the anniversary comes up, and having no recollection of the events of his lost week.
Then the dreams start up in which he meets up with his mother’s killer, who is taunting him from the grave, while also telling Bill that his killing has not stopped even though he is dead. After a suggestion of where to find the body from a dream, Bill discovers a murder victim bearing the same wounds that killed his mother: a knife forced through the mouth, cutting the esophagus, killing the victim by asphyxiation. Bill can’t deal with this revelation, feeling as though he is somehow connected.
But this is only the start of the torment Bill will face, with his psychiatrist trying to help any way she can, even having him go under hypnosis, all the while more bodies pile up and with the dreams affecting Bill more and more. It gets to the point that all fingers are pointed at Bill as the killer – a man with multiple personalties. Even his own partner wants nothing to do with him.
Zeltserman paints the aspect of Bill’s paranoia pitch-perfect throughout. Halfway in, the culprit is revealed only to the reader, delving further into that fateful day and the consequences Bill would deal with from his mentally abusive father. To say more would ruin this finely crafted thriller.
There is a little supernatural element to the story that is done extremely well and taken seriously. Zeltserman builds upon the events to a bloody climax that will make readers cheer. BAD THOUGHTS is one of those books that has been under the radar all year, yet deserves to be discovered by a wider audience. –Bruce Grossman
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Sounds like a cool read.