BAD THINGS

Old secrets and obsessions plague three former friends in this debut thriller.

Ten years ago, in 2009, on the eve of their high school graduation, Delphine Quin, her friend Ariana Callum, and Delphine’s boyfriend, Ryan Martinez, witnessed a terrible crime. All three had arrived at Miami Prep from other places: Delphine from London, Ryan from New York, and Ariana from a trailer park in Florida before her mother married a wealthy man, who abused Ariana. The others’ back stories are also revealed: Ryan’s father is a powerful businessman with ties to unsavory characters, and Delphine’s mother committed suicide on her 18th birthday. They haven’t spoken to one another since the night of the mysterious crime, until Delphine runs into Ariana, whom she thought was dead, in a grocery store. Ariana takes Delphine to lunch and reveals that she has a photograph from that night that shows Ryan wearing a blood-spattered shirt at the scene of the incident—a photo she uses to extract money from Delphine. After the meeting, Delphine calls Ryan to her home in Miami to figure out what to do; they agree that Ariana is dangerous, but rather than address her clear and present danger, they instead begin an affair. Subsequently, Ryan tries to secretly sabotage Delphine’s husband’s career. Ariana loves Ryan, but he loves Delphine, and this love triangle provides the linchpin of the plot. Overall, this is a disturbing and theatrical tale. The nonlinear narrative bounces between the past and present and the three main characters’ first-person perspectives as the facts slowly come out. However, this same nonlinear structure has the effect of diffusing some of the suspense, because just as readers are learning a new detail about the incident in 2009, they’re yanked into an unrelated scene in 2019. The alternating points of view also reveal each character as an unreliable narrator, which means the truth is constantly elusive. Everything does finally come to a head in a violent manner in a climactic confrontation, though, where the truth is revealed.

A dramatic but somewhat disjointed crime story.