Wicked Things

Private investigator Jack Carlson is traveling to the small, remote upstate city of Winship to look into a rash of suspicious insurance claims. Like the farmer who accidentally blew himself up in a garnet mine, and the teenager who died in a peculiar car crash.The Winship police and Medical Examiner appear cooperative but offer no real help. Local insurance agent Joe Bellman is evasive and fearful.And shortly after meeting Jack, both Bellman and his secretary Chris Innes turn up dead, an apparent case of murder-suicide. Jack isn't buying any of it.As he pokes behind the Norman Rockwell exterior of Winship, he finds a place smoldering with crime, corruption and bizarre religious fervor. He becomes involved with a club dancer named Kelly, who may know some of the secrets but who may also be a mortal threat to Jack.The town of Winship is itself part of the puzzle, a place where unseen choirs can be heard, where the ground appears to glow, creating confusion and mental disorder in anyone nearby, where gangs of young thugs roam free to bully and beat people.A friend of Kelly's disappears in an open meadow, as if swallowed up by the earth. Behind it all may be a cherubic old priest, Father Jimmy.And as Jack tries to unravel the growing number of mysteries -- both criminal and mystical -- he finds himself in a fight to save his own life, and sanity...