Who is David Loogan? Harry Dolan sets up our main character in “Bad Things Happen” as a mystery inside the mystery. David Loogan just is. He has a past but no one knows anything about it. In his interactions with others in the story David is terse and vague about his past. Yet David is a warm, funny character who is very loyal and honest with his friends. We readers learn to like David very much before we learn anything about him; just like the other characters in this mystery. As his past gradually gets revealed we cannot believe he is the man who stabbed another man 17 times to kill him just because he “wanted him dead.”
David gets a call in the middle of the night by his good friend Tom Kristoll. Tom needs David to go out and purchase a short handled shovel and then come to his home to help him bury a man he just killed; “a burglar” according to Tom. David does as requested. He and Tom take the man out to a lonely spot in the woods and dig a deep grave and dispose of the body.
Tom takes David into his magazine “Gray Streets” making him his chief editor. It is a skill Tom recognized when David had submitted many revisions of his own short story to the magazine. It was clear that David was a perfectionist, wanting to get the story just right. David does very well at the magazine. Though he is a loner sort of guy David does finally come to attend Tom and Laura’s (his wife) social gatherings of contributing authors. David gets to know most of the writers for whom he edits and Laura. In fact he gets to know Laura a bit too well. He and she enter into an affair.
But David is a loyal friend to Tom and he cannot continue an affair with Tom’s wife so he breaks it off. This loyalty to Tom sets the stage for David’s reaction when Tom is murdered. It is made to look like a suicide but David and the police detective Elizabeth Waishkey don’t believe it. It would have been very difficult for Tom to have squeezed himself through the small office window on the sixth floor of his building to jump to his death. The big lump on the back of Tom’s head could not have been caused by the fall either. So David proceeds to try to find the killer.
David gets set up as the killer of another man, stabbed to death in his own living room. But David doesn’t plan to stick around and get tied up in that mess so he helps the dying man as much as he can and then calls 911 to get medical aid. He then slips away into the night. He is not going to wait for the police to find Tom’s killer (or not). He is going to do it himself.
As David investigates there are more murders. The killings bear a strong resemblance to plots in stories featured in the “Gray Streets” magazine by some of the authors David has edited and had met at Tom’s parties.
In the meantime, Elizabeth (the detective), finds out a bit more about David’s past. The stabbing he was sent to trial for was a defense of himself and his date one night when a drug addict attempted to steal their car and ended up cutting the young lady’s throat. David’s response was to disarm the man and stab him. He went to a phone and called 911 assistance and when he returned the man was rising to his knees so David stabbed him again; this time carefully targeting his heart because he “wanted him dead”.
A retired detective from up-state New York where David’s stabbing had take place arrives in Ann Arbor and gently helps the investigation by trying to track David down. In the end it turns out this man was not a retired detective but the father of the young drug addict David had stabbed to death. When David is located the detective takes a taser to Elizabeth then handcuffs her and uses her with a gun to her head to disarm David. In a dramatic conclusion he takes David and Elizabeth out to the grave site that Tom and David had dug in the beginning of the story to dig up the body and, of course, become their own graves.
I am not going to ruin the end for you. This is a tale with more turns and twists than you can imagine. Harry Dolan creates characters with more wit and warmth than I have seen in a long time. They become real and we readers feel their emotions with them.
“Bad Things Happen” is a powerful mystery with an intricate plot. Its twists and turns take the reader along on a roller coaster ride. Just when you think you have it figured out it twists again and you are right back into the dark mystery story again. I give this one a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter. It is a must read for any devoted mystery reader.
