“It must have been something you said…”

74. If I Die Tonight – Alison Gaylin

An 80s punk has been’s Jaguar ends up in a hit and run crash, a very small police department tries to solve it, the town wants to blame that one weird sensitive kid, and how that one weird sensitive kid’s parent reacts to how little she knows her son the weird sensitive kid are all major components in this story of small town bullshit and its insidious effects on people. Gaylin might not have thought, “I’m writing about small town bullshit,” but there’s so much of it in here that it overtakes anything else.

My favorite character, Pearl the police officer who resents that she is willing to hook up with someone who wears Axe body spray and doesn’t like the super cocky officer who lives with his parents and acts like high school still matters (not the same person who wears Axe, that one’s an EMT), is the person most capable of cutting through said small town bullshit so I was glad to have her in-head perspective.

There was also a major undercurrent of the thing that can turn everywhere into that expression of small town (or here I should say village, really) bullshit that used to lead to pitchforks and torches…social media. Now instead of the pitchforks and the torches, there are comments. And comments that get deleted. And comments that get screenshotted. And these comments do more psychological damage than the Lottery (you know the one) or being chased out with those pitchforks and torches ever could. At least those throwing the stones and carrying the traditional implements to burn “the monster’s” house down on a hunch and a whim had to actually be present and visible.

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Ozymandias did not read the comments. He also didn’t expect me to quote Cutting Crew when not also quoting Kyle Kinane’s cemetery joke.