Twinned with Silent Hill.....a small American town hides a hidden menace (Bad Things - Michael Marshall)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Bad Things - Michael Marshall
Date:	10/06/09 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very easy-going in style with enjoyable social satire in places

Disadvantages: But tries too hard to be something it's not...

What does the budding Dooyoo book reviewer do when everything he picks up to read turns out to be less than thrilling and something of a disappointment? (Don't even bother with Lee Weeks' The Trophy Taker- it was so mind-numbing I couldn't even be bothered to suggest it as a product for review!!) Well, he turns to an author that he has read and enjoyed in the past thats what. Especially when they have new books out that you have not even read yet....

Michael Marshall is an author best known for his sci-fi novels (One Of Us, Spares and Only Forward) written under his full name of Michael Marshall Smith and for the Straw Men novels which took an original and satirical look at the concept of serial killers who work together in the belief that they are the next step of evolution. His last work, The Intruders was received to very mixed reviews and almost didn't know what to make of itself. A fusion between the supernatural and a more tradditional thriller, the book started well but then seemed to end up much more complicated than it neded to be. Still, as I picked this up in Tesco with the new Kathy Reichs, I was sure that this latest novel would be a vast improvement...

John Henderson's life is shattered irretrievably when his eldest son walks out onto the jetty behind his home, keels over and promptly just...dies. Years later, with his marriage disintergrated and in little contact with his remaining son, Henderson has carved out for himself a new, and fairly successful, life for himself as far from his past as he can get. Then he recieves an E-mail from someone who claims to have more information about the mysterious circumstances involving his son's death and, reluctantly, he returns to the sleepy American town of Black Ridge where everything is not as it seems. And before he knows it, John Henderson finds himself caught up in a feud with forces he does not fully understand and fighting a power that has been in the area for a very long time. How does all this tie into the death of his son? Well, for that you are just going to have to read the book for yourselves and find out....

Once more trying to create a mainstream fusion between the supernatural and more conventional story-telling, this book works slightly better than The Intruders in that much here, for much of the story, is left more to the reader's interpretation than in his previous work which thrust it's paranormal suggestions firmly in your face. This latest novel too, reads much more like his sci-fi novels both in style and in it's characterisation; Main character JohnHenderson is highly reminiscent of the leads in Marshall's sf work and would not be out of place in any of those books! In fact, you get a real sense that all Marshall's lead characters are based on a common idea and, having met Michael Marshall at a book signing event, it would be no stretch of the imagination to deduce that this idea is the character Marshall would most likely like to be if he wasn't a writer. Certainly he exudes the same air of mystery and subtle menace as his characters having shared the same room with him for almost an hour!

The main story and plot in Bad Things are a little contrived and anyone who has either watched Silent Hill or played any of the later games will quickly grasp in which direction the whole novel is going. Certainly there are strong links to the Hill's Pyramid Head creation and the notion of a town brimming over with long forgotten secrets. But the whole scary American town hidden away in the back-woods has been done before and done better so don't come into this expecting anything new...that said, it is an enjoyable read that, although it falters a little in it's climax, has much going for it nonetheless.

Or maybe I'm just too difficult to please at the minute....

Summary: A return to his old home-town signifies nothing but trouble for John Henderson....