Procure Bad Things Happen (David Loogan, #1) Translated By Harry Dolan Displayed In Manuscript

book already hasreviews so whatever I was going to say has probably already been said.


I apparently wasn't paying attention and missed reading any of Dolan's books until now.
Left to my own devices, I'm more likely to read mysteries with a cutesy title or cats on the cover.
But there were these two women in the library and one of them was telling the other one that if she was looking for something to read, she should really read Harry Dolan's new book.
She recommended it so highly, that I put his books on my "to read" list, I think part of why I liked this book so much is that it was a departure from the dull cozies we so often read in my mystery book club.
It was actually mysterious, I couldn't figure out the killers for a change, the patterns I usually look for in mysteries weren't there making it easy or making me think it was easy in some of the better ones.
I didn't have much thought to spare on what was really going on because there was always something making me start the next chapter rather than take time to ponder situations.


The mystery of who the main character really was and what he'd done kept things interesting.
I'm looking forward to starting the second book to see if it holds up without that mystery.
The more I think about it the worse the guy seems even though his past is not exciting beyond the one incident.
I mean he helps bury a body at the start of the book and I somehow forgot about how that kind of makes him a bad person because there was so much other killing going on.


We couldn't decide in book club if this was serious or a spoof on other mysteries.
The last hundred pages are insane with twists and revelations, Bad Things Happen, for the most part, is a fairly clever book that draws liberally from across the crime fiction cannon to use various mystery tropes to construct the plot.
The writing is workmanlike but very readable and there are some nice touches and humour, And yet, whilst I enjoyed it, I wasnt bowled over by the story, On reflection I think there are two things that hinder Bad Things Happen from being a stellar book, which its easy to imagine it could have been.
First, I felt the book was all plot, with fairly weak character development for me, the principle characters were either very thinly fleshed out or verging on caricatures.
I just never felt I got to really know any of them, with the possible exception of the cops daughter, who although she has a minor role had a roundness and believability to her.
Second, whilst Dolan has constructed a convoluted plot that doesnt suffer from the donewell, but done before syndrome, it does have three problems.
It feels too knowing, rather than being more subtle and letting the crime aficionados spot things for themselves.
Although all the multiple twists are meant to be surprises, none of them really are as its clear that there is going to be a twist every few pages, even if its not clear what they will be the result is that one is never really left gasping with wonder.
And perhaps most importantly, certain parts of the plot really lacked credibility, For example, I simply couldnt buy that David Loogan covered up a murder for someone he barely knew given how his character is portrayed.
The credibility issue was stretched because of the need for an endless succession of plot devices.
If the story was going to be as clever as it aimed to be then these plot devices would, I think, have seemed more credible.
This all sounds like a lot of griping, which it undoubtedly is, born of a frustration that, although enjoyable, this could have been a really brilliant book.


This story reminds me of a contest that was used to promote a science fiction miniseries a while back.
The plot of the miniseries revolved around multiple murders, and people entering the contest had to try to solve the crimes.
Well the solution was VERY tricky and I was completely wrong,

To get on with the review:

A mysterious man who calls himself David Loogan arrives in Ann Arbor and rents a furnished house near the University of Michigan.
Loogan, who has no job, hangs out at coffee shops people watches reads and just drifts through his days.






Then, by a serendipitous sequence of events, Loogan is offered a job editing stories for a literary mystery magazine called 'Grey Streets', published by a man named Tom Kristoll.




Over the next few weeks Loogan and Tom become friendly and occasionally hang out or have a few drinks.
Then Loogan meets Tom's wife Laura, and the seductive blonde seduces Loogan, So Loogan sometimes schmoozes with Tom, and sometimes romances his wife,



The real action starts when a man is killed in Tom's house, and the publisher calls Loogan in something of a panic.
Tom and Loogan bury the body in the woods, and Loogan insists on knowing who the dead man is and what happened.
Tom spins an elaborate tale involving selfdefense, which turns out to be a lie and the truth is slowly revealed as the story unfolds.




More violence follows the first tragedy, and before long two more people are dead supposedly suicides.
However Police Detective Elizabeth Waishkey isn't fooled, and she and her team investigate the suspicious deaths.
Complications add up as another person is killed everyone lies people keep changing their stories evidence goes missing etc.




Waishkey and Loogan meet during the police inquiries and like each other, but it goes no further than that especially when Loogan becomes thesuspect and goes on the run.
Loogan is determined to uncover the murderer himself, and interviews people who might have information about the crimes.
These include the staff at Grey Streets writers who contribute stories to the magazine book authors friends and neighbors of the victims and more.


Loogan buys a burner phone and repeatedly calls Detective Waishkey to chitchat about the case.
The cop tries to convince Loogan to turn himself in saying they'll figure it out together but no dice.


To complicate matters, a retired detective from upstate New York who's bored with fishing arrives in Ann Arbor.
He tells Detective Waishkey that he heard about Loogan being spotted in Michigan, and that 'David Loogan' is an alias for a criminal who escaped justice in New York.
It was the detective's case, and he wants to see Loogan get captured,



As the mystery plays out, people's baser natures are

revealed, secrets are uncovered, and the truth comes out.
If there had been a contest to guess the perp I would have lost miserably, LOL.

I enjoyed the book, but I have some criticisms:

Tom asks Loogan to help dispose of a body and Loogan immediately agrees.
Really He could go to prison maybe for life as an accessory to murder, This isn't believable.

Detective Waishkey casually and repeatedly blabs police discoveries to persons of interest in the case.
Cops would never do this,

The plot has too many twists, It's unnecessarily complicated, and hard to keep up with,

This is Harry Dolan's debut novel, and overall it's a good effort, I think many mystery fans would enjoy the story,

You can follow my reviews at sitelink blogspot . Here's the review I posted at MADreads:
sitelink madisonpubliclibrary. org/m

Sometimes I'm reluctant to write a review of a book, Not because the book was bad but because it was good, So good that I know I won't be able to do it justice with my own words.
Bad Things Happen is just such a book, sitelinkHarry Dolan crosses Raymond Chandleresque noir with Quentin Tarantino's rapidfire dialog and complicated plotting style.
All this leavened with enough dry wit to make a Jane Austen fan sit up and take notice.
This literary mystery set within the literary mystery community of Ann Arbor the perfect noir setting, of course! is best described by Dolan's own characters:

"A reporter came to interview us.
I think he was expecting a typical literary journal, but we were publishing mysteries and crime stories.
What was the theme he wanted to know, If we had to describe a Gray Streets story in one sentence, what would it be Tom had an answer ready, almost as if he expected the question: 'Plans go wrong, bad things happen, people die.
'" pg.Gray Streets is what brings the hero of this tale, the mysterious David Loogan, into the world of Ann Arbor's crime fiction literary scene.
David, a recent transplant to Michigan, leads an isolated, quiet life, Until he meets Tom Kristoll, Tom is the managing editor of Gray Streets and he convinces David to take on some editing work for the magazine.
The two men become good friends, So good that when Tom asks David to help dispose of an inconvenient body, David agrees almost without question.
Despite his willingness to help and the fact that no one immediately misses the dead man, David is sure he hasn't heard the last of the problem.
His fears are justified. Tom is thrown from the fifth floor Gray Streets offiice window and David is drawn in will he or nill he.
Especially as police detective Elizabeth Waishkey turns her focus to David, Words and schemes fly off the page, When a death is made to look like a suicide using a Shakespeare quote, the police chief knows the clue won't be much help:

"'a murderer who quotes Shakespeare.
' McCaleb reached the doorway and turned back, 'And the victim is a man who published a literary magazine, A man who, we have to assume, knew plenty of people capable of quoting Shakespeare, A man who lived in Ann Arbora city where, if you order a mocha latte, it gets handed to you by someone who's read Hamlet.
'"

Dolan's pacing is perfect as he reveals the layers in plot and character.
David Loogan is almost as much of a puzzle as the murder, Is he a criminal A retired assassin A writer in hiding I believed all of these things at one point or another.
You'll have to read for yourself to see which is true, And if I did think that perhaps Dolan erred by adding just one more twist, it's so small a quibble I had to struggle to find it.
Can't wait to see if Dolan can do it again in his sophomore effort, sitelinkVery Bad Men.
.