Jun 3

Jun 3 Book Review : Eryk Pruitt - Something Bad Wrong (2023)

Although it would like you to believe otherwise, Netflix didn’t invent our obsession with true crime. It just industrialized it. Turned our strange, long-standing compulsion to soothe ourselves with stories of murder and mayhem into an algorithm-friendly empire. We were into this stuff way before Making a Murderer made thinkpieces trendy. Corny network relics like Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted walked so Netflix could run, collect awards, and make us question our morals in high definition.

Eryk Pruitt’s novel Something Bad Wrong isn’t based on a real case, but it’s built from the bones of the genre. It’s not interested in the whodunit so much as the why-we-keep-digging. It’s a Southern thriller that wants to interrogate our need for true crime, not just imitate it. What do we gain from turning tragedy into entertainment? And why do we love telling ourselves stories so much?

Something Bad Wrong follows Jess Keeler, a middle-aged mother who sacrificed everything at the altar of domestic stability and wound up with nothing to show for it. With the future offering little more than blank space, she turns to the past specifically, a local cold case involving two star-crossed lovers found dead, tied to a tree, fifty years earlier. The case hits close to home: her grandfather, Jim Ballard, was a detective on the case and his mysterious fall from grace has haunted her family ever since.

But the murders didn’t go cold because they were unsolvable. The case went cold because some people needed it to. And Jess, bored, bitter, and searching for meaning, is finally ready to start asking the kinds of questions that don’t get answered without consequences.

**Eryk Pruitt and the Subtle Art of Handling Your Sh*t**

One of the things I admire most about Eryk Pruitt’s writing (and something surprisingly rare among crime novelists) is his willingness to give his characters flaws that are actually flaws. Not the fake kind, like being too committed to justice or too brilliant for their own good. Pruitt’s characters aren’t noble workaholics or idealists in over their heads.

They’re real people: impulsive, insecure, sometimes even flat-out dumb. But what makes them sing, what makes them feel unmistakably Pruitt's is the way they struggle to overcome their weaker selves. Not through epiphanies or plot twists, but through messy, incremental choices that feel both earned and fragile.

Libidinous, disgraced journalist Dan Decker is one of Pruitt’s finest creations. He’s brilliant, persistent, and somehow always being outwitted by his own testosterone. He’s not someone you’d want to be (or even sit next to at a bar) but in Jess Keeler’s story, he’s essential. His presence lends her true crime podcast credibility, yes, but more than that, he teaches her how the craft actually works: how to chase leads, shape a narrative, and survive being ignored.

That’s where Pruitt draws one of his sharpest lines: between a storyteller and a journalist. Between a great story and a credible one. And as someone who works in that world, I found this distinction to be one of the novel’s most insightful and least preachy truths.

Something Bad Wrong isn’t just about solving a fifty-year-old murder. It’s about why anyone would want to. It explores how easy it is to convince yourself you’re chasing justice, when what you’re really chasing is a story. One that often has little to do with the truth. Based on hunches, hearsay, and circumstantial evidence, the stories we build are often more revealing about us than about what actually happened. Jim Ballard’s notepad serves as a fulcrum for that idea as its meaning transmogrifies between eras.

Pruitt doesn’t moralize, but his argument is clear: the truth is usually boring, uncomfortable, and ugly. And despite what we tell ourselves, most of us aren’t searching for truth. We’re searching for meaning. For comfort. For validation that our own instincts and choices make sense. In that way, true crime becomes a form of contemporary mythology. It doesn’t really explain the world; it helps us feel better about living in it.

The Thing About Big Jim Ballard

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying this (it’s literally) the first thing we learn about him) but Jess’s grandfather, Big Jim Ballard, suffering from early onset dementia. That wouldn’t be an issue on its own. Dementia is a hard, real thing, and plenty of stories handle it with nuance. But Big Jim isn’t just any side character, he takes up a lot of space in this novel. And for most of it, his personality is split down the middle: one half is a slow, miserable mental decline; the other is a brutal old-school cop who used to beat confessions out of suspects like he was doing cardio.

Now that’s a properly flawed character. But spending so much time inside his spiral ,watching him fade while the book refuses to let go was a tough hang, even when it was thematically justified.

Jim doesn’t have a secret. He holds no buried truth that will crack the case open or redeem the past. What he does offer Jess is something messier and more unsettling: a steady drip of fragmented memory, passed down through the weird alchemy of legacy and intergenerational trauma. His presence in the novel is narratively necessary. You can’t tell a story about inherited violence without including the guy who started the chain.

But even in the 1972 timeline, it pushes the limits of believability that no one thought to sit Big Jim down and tell him he needed a break from society. Or, you know, a permanent stay in a nursing home. Because the truth is, he’s not just a flawed character. He’s the narrative equivalent of a wrecking ball: smashing through scenes, burying the plot under bricks, and leaving everyone else to sweep up the debris. But another ugly truth is that people are often too occupied with their own selves to deal with people like Big Jim.

Eryk Pruitt writes thrillers that play by the rules, but inside that structure, he’s carved out a creative space all his own. His characters don’t just have to overcome obstacles; they have to wrestle with who they think they are and what they think they feel. I still prefer What We Reckon by a hair, but Something Bad Wrong stands near the top of his body of work. Over the years, he’s quietly become one of our quirkiest, most emotionally honest crime writers and he still doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.

As summer reads go, this one’s about as sophisticated as they come.