If you're looking for a good scary summer read, Michael Marshall's Bad Things is the book for you.

Former lawyer John Henderson is haunted by his four year-old son's death.  He tries to escape his past by moving to a town in coastal Oregon and working as a waiter at a pizzeria.  But things start to happen that draw him back into the mystery that shattered his world.

What separates this novel from all of the Stephen King/Peter Straub books that it has been compared to is the writing.  Whereas King and Straub infuse dread and foreboding throughout their novels, the better part of Bad Things reads like a straight novel.  It succeeds very well in this regard.  The plotting, characters, and narrative are all first-rate.

It takes a long time for the scary part of the book to develop. For a good part of the novel I wondered if it was supposed to be scary at all.  It took me a while to realize that the veneer of normalcy only made the emerging horror more potent.  Other reviewers have compared the book to a David Lynch movie: creeping horror lurking beneath an everyday scene.

Did I mention that this book is particularly well-written?  Not only was it tough to put down, there were passages throughout the book that completely drew me in (not many novels can do that).  Plus, the plot‘s twists and turns will keep you guessing until the end.

For those that like their summer reading on the scary side, Bad Things is tough to beat.