On a beautiful summer afternoon, four-year-old Scott Henderson walked out onto a jetty over a lake in Black Ridge in Washington. He never came back.
John Henderson's world ended that day. But three years later, he is still alive. Living a life, of sorts. Getting by, until one night he receives an email from a stranger who claims to know what happened to his son.
Against his better judgment, Henderson returns to Black Ridge, unleashing a terrifying sequence of events that threatens to destroy what remains of everything that he once held dear.
The stunning new psychological thriller, “Bad Things (Dont Just Happen to Other People...)” by Micheal Marshall, the best-selling author of Straw Men , is full of twists says the New York Times.
Micheal Marshall is a novelist and screenwriter . He is the author of internationally best-selling thrillers like “The Straw Men”, “The Lonely Dead”, “Blood of Angels” and the “The Intruders” which is currently under series development with BBC.
He had established a successful career earlier as Michael Marshall Smith. His ground-breaking first novel , “Only Forward”, won the Phillip K. Dick and the August Derleth award and its critically acclaimed successors “Spares” and “One of Us” have been optioned by major Hollywood studios. He lives in North London with his wife, son and two cats.
The novel takes a look into the business or rather the psyche of “evil” which comes across in the book as a series of disasters.
“It is the practice of evil, and hence, in a sense, the inhuman that is the distinctive mark of the human in the animal kingdom,” quotes Marshall from Jean Baudrillard 's Cool Memories V at the beginning of his book.
The book takes off with the mysterious death of Scott, who despite toppling into the lake, does not die of drowning. The coroner tells the police that the “boy has just died”.
It is in slow-motion- where the writer and the father of the child appear as third parties, as if watching an episode from a movie.
Just before his death, Scott's expression changes to one of horror as he tells his “daddy to run!”
The book is full of surprises. And the style is kind of hit-on-your face – contemporary and everyday. The characters and the fear are real. Almost near home. Worth a read.
Priced at Rs 250, the book has been published by Harper Collins in June.
--Madhusree Chatterjee