Review by Ian Keogh
Marie’s day starts out as ordinary. She’s a Toronto resident chatting with her friend Justin about his catastrophic love life as they head to the store for a lottery ticket. Coming out, they see an old high school friend of Marie’s step in front of a truck. He survives, but in a coma. Even that, though, is no indication as to how screwed up Marie’s day is going to become.
Steve Rolston takes a simple premise for One Bad Day and exploits it well. Marie’s portrayed as normal, likeable and down to Earth, suggesting anyone’s day could take an abrupt turn into life threatening circumstances. The naturalism is a continuing theme, as Rolston has Marie react to every new situation as any reader might. Although she’s adaptable, resourceful and creative, she also makes mistakes during events that she’s previously only experienced on TV shows.
Reality is applied to the attractive cartooning, with no exaggeration to the cast, scrupulously drawn as ordinary, and some nice views of the city, such as the CN Tower and harbourfront as seen from the islands in Lake Ontario. The one anomaly is the other major character, Teddy, or Tinman as he’d prefer to be known when working. He latches on to Marie at the hospital and follows her thereafter, but he’s a very conspicuous presence in shades and trenchcoat with a distinctively bald head.
A clever twist gradually becomes apparent, supplanting the original presumption of the title referring to Marie. The deeper into the story Rolston heads, the more it could apply to others. There’s smart foreshadowing also, explaining why in one particular situation Marie doesn’t do what most of us would consider obvious. A couple of times now obsolete technology is used, but that just means One Bad Day has progressed from a contemporary thriller to an authentic period piece. Rolston constantly surprises and there’s no disappointing at the end.
As of writing One Bad Day’s Amazon ranking is 8,359,108, and it’s definitely a few million better than that in terms of quality. If you like a quirky thriller there’s no excuse for not picking up a used copy and trying to push it up the rankings.
