Bad Things

It’s difficult to know what to make of BAD THINGS, the fourth novel from Michael Marshall under this particular name (he has at least two others, including Michael Marshall Smith). It’s basically a suspense thriller with some unexpected snatches of violence, but also carries a hint of the supernatural.

And it is generally well-written, which is the main reason for staying with it until the end. But not knowing how to categorize the novel is not the reason why it is ultimately a letdown. It’s more because all of its various characteristics never seem to gel into a coherent whole.

A prologue opens the novel, where we are introduced to John Henderson as he steps out on the porch of his huge, expensive house on the shore of a lake in Black Ridge, a small wooded town in Washington State. His wife, Carol, pregnant with their second child, is already on the porch, and their 4-year-old son, Scott, is standing near the edge of a jetty on the lake. Then, suddenly, Scott collapses and falls into the water. But the medical examination reveals that the boy mysteriously died before taking the fall.

The narrative then picks up three years later. John’s marriage has fallen apart, and he lives alone in a beach house in Oregon, where he leads a withdrawn life as a waiter and sometime substitute pizza chef at a local restaurant. One night, while killing time at his computer, he receives an e-mail from a stranger that reads, “I know what happened.” He ignores it at first, but eventually secures the name and phone number of the woman who sent him the disturbing message.

And soon, John finds himself back in Black Ridge and meeting with Ellen Robertson, the woman who sent him the note. Although she reached out to him, Ellen is irritatingly paranoid and fears for her life, with John finding it nearly impossible to get any solid information out of her. What he does learn is that Ellen’s husband died under circumstances similar to his own son. Ellen suspects that these deaths were caused by some sort of evil, sinister apparition that haunts the nearby woods, as it does similar areas all over the world.

It’s all too much for John to believe, but he senses there is more going on with Ellen and the Robertson family, who have lived in the Black Ridge area for generations, so he pries into their history and discovers that his questions and his presence are not at all welcome. Indeed, it soon seems that the entire town is guarding some kind of dark secret somehow connected to the Robertsons.

Marshall shifts the first-person narration of John and his investigation to third-person observations of Carol, and the intrusion of her otherwise quiet life by strangers who threaten her and her surviving child. Eventually, it is revealed that these threats are connected to the family secrets John is slowly uncovering in Black Ridge. But the connection feels flimsy, and continues to even after the essential information behind the threats is revealed.
 
The characters are, for the most, strong and believable. And the same can be said for the sense of menace Marshall brings to the wooded Washington environs. But after a while, the suspense starts to feel more like teasing. It takes John so long and to pry any usable information from Ellen — and with so much effort — that we begin to wonder why he even bothers. And each time he comes close to returning to his life in Oregon, it feels like a welcome relief.
 
And that supernatural element mentioned earlier: We eventually learn more about it, and it comes close to being the most intriguing feature of the story. But Marshall doesn’t stay with it long enough to give it the weight it deserves. And John’s involvement with a young waitress at the Oregon restaurant and her amateur drug-dealing boyfriend are irritating distractions that only gum up the works.
 
Marshall deserves credit for trying to blend dark magic into what otherwise reads like a straightforward search for answers into the death of his protagonist’s son. But having first taken us so far and stuffed us so full of extenuating information, it feels like Marshall couldn’t figure out what to do with the dark magic element.
 
The ending, when we reach it, feels rushed and unsatisfying. That’s all the more disappointing, because when Marshall is good — as he is with character and locale ambience — he is very good. 
 
But BAD THINGS seems more confused that controlled. —Alan Cranis

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE INTRUDERS by Michael Marshall

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1. The Intruders
2. Dead Man’s Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table
3. A Shot in the Dark / Shell Game
4. Missing
5. Songs of Innocence