Real Bad Things Review

Author: Kelly J. Ford

Genre: Suspense

Publisher: Thomas Mercer

Release Date: Sept. 1, 2022

Order Link:  Amazon

Many thanks to the publisher for an arc.

5 Controversial Stars!

From the author of Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes an evocative suspense about the cost of keeping secrets and the dangers of coming home.

Review:

As a young teen, Jane Mooney admitted to murdering her abusive step-father  . . .  and there was no body.  She just up and confessed when he went missing, spent time in juvenile detention and upon release, Jane fled the small Arkansas town of Maud Bottoms, leaving behind her spiteful, revengeful mother, her cherished brother Jason, her best friend, her girlfriend Georgie Lee and some dark buried secrets.  And now, twenty-five years later, ghosts have surfaced - it's a time of reckoning as the stepfather’s body has washed up after a flood.  Jane is ready to face the music as she returns home knowing she’ll be arrested.  What she finds upon arrival is the same old tired, gossipy, prejudice town she left years ago.  Her mother is screaming for her to be arrested, her brother and best friend seem to be avoiding her, and Georgia Lee, is now a married woman town Council woman.  Go figure.

Ford excels at exploiting setting to render a dark, authentic story about life in a small southern town, one with two distinct living areas -the rich high on the hill on one side of the tracks and the run down trailer park on the other side where the hopeless, the lost and sometimes abused live.  A place where real bad things often happen and for the most part, no one gives a dang.  This is the place Jane returns to with all its bad memories, smells, and hopelessness.  Ford slowly builds a bleak picture of Jane's life as a young lesbian girl with an abusive stepfather and addict mother and a young brother she protects with her life.  The tone is bleak, the pace steady as the many layers of this story are peeled back until the ugly truth is finally revealed.

Real Bad Things is a raw, gritty, intense masterpiece.  I applaud Ford for consistently showcasing and taking a stand for the plight of the poor, the unusual, the different.  While some of the twists in this story are foreseeable, the delivery is tension laden perfection all the way through leading to a ending some have found controversial; however, I for one couldn't see ending any other way. Not one to shy away from social issues, Ford nailed it with Real Bad Things in my opinion.  I recognize this book won't be for every reader, but it held me mesmerized as I read it in mostly one sitting.  I can't wait to read more from this author.  Highly recommended to fans of southern noir and suspense thrillers. 

Synopsis:

Beneath the roiling waters of the Arkansas River lie dead men and buried secrets.

When Jane Mooney’s violent stepfather, Warren, disappeared, most folks in Maud Bottoms, Arkansas, assumed he got drunk and drowned. After all, the river had claimed its share over the years.

When Jane confessed to his murder, she should have gone to jail. That’s what she wanted. But without a body, the police didn’t charge her with the crime. So Jane left for Boston—and took her secrets with her.

Twenty-five years later, the river floods and a body surfaces. Talk of Warren’s murder grips the town. Now in her forties, Jane returns to Maud Bottoms to reckon with her past: to do jail time, to face her revenge-bent mother, to make things right.

But though Jane’s homecoming may enlighten some, it could threaten others. Because in this desolate river valley, some secrets are better left undisturbed.