Bad Day Breaking by John Galligan

Published by Atria Books on September 13, 2022

Cults, killers, human trafficking, prison pen pals, corrupt cops, and sexual assaults are among the themes that John Galligan shoehorns into Bad Day Breaking. Galligan also mixed multiple crime story elements in Bad Moon Rising; perhaps the leftovers made it into Bad Day Breaking, the fourth novel in the Bad Axe County series.

Bad Axe is a rural county in Wisconsin. The county sheriff is Heidi Kick. When Heidi and Melissa Grooms were teens, they did a lot of drugs. Heidi got clean and told the truth about their supplier, Roman Vanderhoof, a truth that sent him to prison for 14 years. After his release, he contacted Melissa (who never got clean for long) and came after Heidi.

The story begins with Deputy Mikayla Stonebreaker roughing up Jerome Pearl in a Walmart parking lot. Jerome and his wife Ruth are the leaders of the House of Shalah. County residents view the House of Shalah as a cult and want its members gone. Heidi makes herself unpopular by suspending Stonebreaker because even cult leaders have civil rights. Unfortunately, the Police and Fire Commission has little use for legal niceties. It agrees with the community about the cult and reinstates Stonebreaker. She makes it her mission to force Heidi out of office.

Vanderhoof and Stonebreaker each thirst for revenge, setting up two subplots. A third involves Duke Hashimoto, an ATF agent during the ATF’s disastrous response to violations of gun laws by Branch Davidians in Waco. As older readers might recall, the ATF attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound despite knowing that cult members were aware that ATF was coming. Four ATF agents were killed in a failed attempt to search the compound. The ATF later embarked on a full-scale retaliatory siege that ended with the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 20 children. Hashimoto was devastated by those losses and by the government’s later attempt to excuse its incompetent decision-making and to rewrite history in its favor.

Hashimoto was running an informant in the House of Shalah cult. Before he could get a warrant to search the Bad Axe County storage units that cult members have occupied, ATF lost interest. Hashimoto retired and his informant was killed. He returned to Wisconsin when Fernanda Carpenter called him about pornographic pictures that cult members had taken of her daughter.

The subplots swirl around like snow on a windy Wisconsin winter afternoon. Two of Heidi’s deputies seem to have ambiguous (possibly improper) relationships with prison pen pals. Released prisoners seem to have a relationship with the cult, which seems to be engaged in the kind of crimes involving women and children that keep Hashimoto from sleeping peacefully. Somebody with embalming skills seems to have disguised a corpse while a different dead body is implicated in a crime to mislead the police about the reason for the murder. Like any good cult, there also seems to be a plan to have members drink the kind of Kool-Aid that induces a permanent sleep. More murders ensue, as well as an attempt to murder Heidi that might cause Heidi to face a murder charge of her own.

The subplots all link together but the sheer number of stories makes it difficult to invest in any of them. It’s all a bit much. At some point, crime plots can become so complex that they lose any semblance of plausibility. I think that happened here. I kept hoping that Galligan would pick a plot and give it some flesh instead of throwing multiple plots against the wall to see if any would stick. Still, the story remains coherent.

Action scenes are creative (diving into a pond of pig manure is an image I won’t soon forget) and Heidi’s character development suggests a real person who has made some mistakes and is doing her best to overcome obstacles and live selflessly. Whether she has a future in law enforcement after this novel is unclear (and perhaps unlikely). I don’t know what that means for the Bad Axe County series, but I hope Galligan’s next novel (whether or not it is in this series) involves a less robust mixture of plot elements.

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Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

Published by Atria Books on June 29, 2021

Thrillers with original or unusual plots are difficult to find. Bad Moon Rising combines a variety of plot elements — homeless men gone missing, a sheriff running for relection who receives mysterious opposition research, a man who believes a creepy diet will flush chronic wasting disease from his system, Amish witnesses to crime who see no evil, and a couple of damaged teens — into a flavorful stew.

The novel is set in fictitious Bad Axe County, near (and perhaps modeled upon) Richland County in western Wisconsin. Wisconsin might not be as crazy as Florida, but its memorable serial killers include a cannibal and a man who made lampshades out of his victims. One of the killers in Bad Moon Rising might have been shaped by that history.

Rumors are flying about Bad Axe County Sheriff Heidi Kick. Some of the rumors are being spread by Barry Rickreiner or his mother. Barry is running against Heidi in the next election. One rumor is that Heidi is pregnant and that her husband Harley isn’t the father. The pregnancy, at least, seems to be more than a rumor.

Heidi and Harley already have three kids. Their daughter is at a summer camp for gender nonconforming youth. Their two boys, Taylor and Dylan, are bothered by Barry’s nasty election campaign. Taylor is the more sensitive and therefore the more disturbed of the two, which makes Heidi wonder whether she needs to involve a therapist. All of Heidi’s woes make her a more multifaceted protagonist than crime fiction typically produces.

Heidi has received anonymous emails that include “opposition research” about Barry, including the possibility that he poisoned his former girlfriend, whose death was regarded as a suicide. That potential crime plays a role in the plot, as does a priest who worries that homeless men are picked to join work crews and never seen again. The priest’s concern seems well-founded when Heidi chases a runaway Amish buggy that is carrying the dead body of a homeless drifter.

Other characters who contribute to the story include: a 17-year-old schizophrenic boy who mostly disobeys the voices that tell him to harm people; a girl of about the same age whose parents allowed her to be sexually abused; a couple of brothers (the bad one and the really bad one) who might or might not be Amish; and a newspaper reporter named Leroy “Grape” Fanta whose newspaper has not survived the arrival of electronic media. Fanta plays a significant role while invetigating crazy screeds about deer prions that, in the screed writer's view, are transferring chronic wasting disease to humans.

Bad Moon Rising might be seen as an indictment of an underfunded mental health system that fails to detect and treat mental illness, leaving it to law enforcement to address the aftermath of that public health failure. Yet John Galligan doesn’t use the novel to make an overt political statement. Rather, he weaves multiple story threads into a tight knit, generates excitement with timely action scenes, and builds tension as one of the deranged characters places Heidi’s family members at risk. Heidi’s troubles make her a convincing and sympathetic character, but she doesn’t lose the reader’s support by endlessly reflecting upon her imperfect life.

Bad Moon Rising tells an engaging story about colorful characters. Galligan moves the plot at a good pace without sacrificing atmosphere or characterization. Only a skilled writer can tell such an offbeat story and make it seem so real. Bad Moon Rising is the third book in a series that deserves a long life.

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