Book Review: Big Bad, by Christian Galacar
Damaged FBI agent with daddy issues, sister issues, and drug issues investigates her sister's murder.
Rude Human Press, 2019, 488 pages
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets the small-town atmosphere of Stephen King...
From the twisted imagination of best-selling author Christian Galacar comes a dark mystery thriller about the difference between living the stories we’re given and living the stories we dare to make for ourselves.
At the height of a blizzard, Molly Rifkin goes missing in her small New England community of Rockcliffe Island. But when she is found dead of an apparent suicide, the story doesn’t add up. There are more questions than answers. And there are those who would like to see the whole thing just go away.
But it won’t be that easy...
Molly’s sister is FBI agent Emma Shane, who has been hanging on to her career by a thread. But when her sister turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, she is forced to confront the horrific past they once shared in order to discover the truth of her death - and the course of her own future.
As Emma digs deeper into the mystery on Rockcliffe Island, she finds herself coming face-to-face with corruption, murder, and two of the island's most powerful and dangerous families.
Big Bad has the feel of an indie-published novel that wasn't tightly edited enough. The characters are developed and detailed, there is a long, meaty plot with many twists, but frequently I found myself annoyed at all the excessive dialog and internal monologues articulating every thought the characters had. I give this book an A- for plotting and characterization a B- for writing.
Emma Shane is an FBI agent on suspension who learns that her little sister, Molly, is dead. Molly moved a few years ago to Rockcliffe Island, a little island off the coast of New England, married kind of a douchey guy she doesn't really respect, and had a kid and a few affairs. Then she's found dead by a gunshot wound in a storage lot during a blizzard, and the police are calling it a suicide.
Emma arrives at Rockcliffe Island and finds an intertwined plot involving two wealthy families and the chief of police, and unsurprisingly, her sister's "suicide" is not making a lot of sense to her. She meets a varied cast of characters, from an affable taxi driver with a tragic story to the policeman who found her sister's body and isn't buying the chief's story either. Figuring out what happened and how Molly's death is related to the island's two wealthy families who run everything is half the plot. The other half is a series of flashbacks dribbled out to us over the course of the novel about what happened to Molly and Emma during their troubled childhood with their mentally unstable father.
In the end, these two parallel threads come together in a somewhat improbable manner. We also get a lot of additional exposition about both Emma and Molly. Emma, following a tragic shooting, has acquired a drug addiction. She also, like her younger sister, seems to like drowning her sorrows in bed with the nearest available man. This makes her interesting but she seems to be built up as a complex, tragic character with little payoff by the end of the novel, but with plenty of grist for future books.
I liked the plotting and the non-stop plot twists which mostly flowed organically. I didn't like the writing and I thought some of the plot contrivances were too contrived. This was a middling thriller that probably would have been better if more had been cut.
My complete list of book reviews.
Rude Human Press, 2019, 488 pages
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets the small-town atmosphere of Stephen King...
From the twisted imagination of best-selling author Christian Galacar comes a dark mystery thriller about the difference between living the stories we’re given and living the stories we dare to make for ourselves.
At the height of a blizzard, Molly Rifkin goes missing in her small New England community of Rockcliffe Island. But when she is found dead of an apparent suicide, the story doesn’t add up. There are more questions than answers. And there are those who would like to see the whole thing just go away.
But it won’t be that easy...
Molly’s sister is FBI agent Emma Shane, who has been hanging on to her career by a thread. But when her sister turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, she is forced to confront the horrific past they once shared in order to discover the truth of her death - and the course of her own future.
As Emma digs deeper into the mystery on Rockcliffe Island, she finds herself coming face-to-face with corruption, murder, and two of the island's most powerful and dangerous families.
Big Bad has the feel of an indie-published novel that wasn't tightly edited enough. The characters are developed and detailed, there is a long, meaty plot with many twists, but frequently I found myself annoyed at all the excessive dialog and internal monologues articulating every thought the characters had. I give this book an A- for plotting and characterization a B- for writing.
Emma Shane is an FBI agent on suspension who learns that her little sister, Molly, is dead. Molly moved a few years ago to Rockcliffe Island, a little island off the coast of New England, married kind of a douchey guy she doesn't really respect, and had a kid and a few affairs. Then she's found dead by a gunshot wound in a storage lot during a blizzard, and the police are calling it a suicide.
Emma arrives at Rockcliffe Island and finds an intertwined plot involving two wealthy families and the chief of police, and unsurprisingly, her sister's "suicide" is not making a lot of sense to her. She meets a varied cast of characters, from an affable taxi driver with a tragic story to the policeman who found her sister's body and isn't buying the chief's story either. Figuring out what happened and how Molly's death is related to the island's two wealthy families who run everything is half the plot. The other half is a series of flashbacks dribbled out to us over the course of the novel about what happened to Molly and Emma during their troubled childhood with their mentally unstable father.
In the end, these two parallel threads come together in a somewhat improbable manner. We also get a lot of additional exposition about both Emma and Molly. Emma, following a tragic shooting, has acquired a drug addiction. She also, like her younger sister, seems to like drowning her sorrows in bed with the nearest available man. This makes her interesting but she seems to be built up as a complex, tragic character with little payoff by the end of the novel, but with plenty of grist for future books.
I liked the plotting and the non-stop plot twists which mostly flowed organically. I didn't like the writing and I thought some of the plot contrivances were too contrived. This was a middling thriller that probably would have been better if more had been cut.
My complete list of book reviews.