Bad Things by Michael Marshall.

I was lucky enough to snag an ARC from Library Thing's Early Reviewers program two months in a row.  Unlike the mediocre Enemies & Allies, the latest Michael Marshall title showed up on my doorstep one rainy afternoon, and by the evening I had devoured it in pretty near one setting.



I've been following the author for a few years now, having gobbled down his science fiction (published under Michael Marshall Smith) before moving on to the more mainstream horror thrillers.  I found last year's publication as MMS, The Servants, a bit short and uneven, so I was intrigued to see what would come of another thriller - The Straw Men arc was one of the few trilogies I've found genuinely disturbing in the last few years.  Marshall has a handle on the darker side of human nature, and his supernaturals have the ability to get under your skin with just enough warped truth to make the ideas creep into your subconscious and stick.

The first thing that struck me on unwrapping the proof package was the unfortunately mediocre title and cover art - it looks like just about every other mainstream thriller, from James Patterson to Stephen King.  There are a few viewpoint characters, but the majority of the story follows John Henderson, a divorced ex-military, ex-lawyer, who's gone to lengths to distance himself from the mysterious death of his four year old son Scott years earlier.  A mysterious email purporting to know the circumstances behind the death pulls him away from a quiet life as a drifting waiter.  Returning back to the town where his son died, he finds uneasy presences in the woods, leading to a string of other deaths and a web of complicity surrounding one of the town's oldest families.

The reveal has hints of both the pacts made by The Upright Man and the community in The Intruders, but it took too long to get there to satisfy me completely.  By the time John figured out what was happening, I was more impatient than scared;  part of this is the inclusion of a needlessly convoluted B plot that surrounds the daughter of his new employer and her drug-dealing boyfriend. It did have cohesive themes with Marshall's idea of webs of guilt and mistrust, but in my opinion it bogged down John's own journey unnecessarily. 

Marshall's prose is competant as always, with occasional gems of insight paired with carefully chosen epigraphs.  This is well-worth picking up if you've enjoyed The Intruders, or The Straw Men, and I was pleased to see a characteristic return to the use of the "Michael Marshall" name, but the slow beginning prevents me from unequivocably recommending it.

Read April 2009
Tag: horror