Aric Davis's A Good and Useful Hurt starts off as a run-of-the-mill love story; not even its tattoo parlor setting makes it particularly distinctive. Boy (Mike) meets girl (Deb) and run said tattoo shop together; boy and girl establish their Grand Rapids location by drinking at the local microbrewery and visiting the public museum. About as interesting as unflavored yogurt so far. Oh, and there's a serial killer on the loose.
Then things become interesting. Quite by accident, Mike gets into the business of tattooing as a memorial service: incorporating the cremated ashes of customers' loved ones into their tattoos. He and Deb--and the reader--think it's just eccentric at first, until a twisted, tragic series of events leads them to discover an unsuspected power in the macabre art of cremated-ash tattoos. They might even be able to use their unlikely discovery to save a pair of unwitting and innocent lives--if time doesn't run out. As Mike's mentor puts it in the book's stark opening line, "F*ck art; this is war."
A Good and Useful Hurt is part thriller, part mystery and part love story, with an emotional vulnerability and enough action to keep the pages flying by. The denouement is as gruesome as it is unlikely, but it turns a deceptively unremarkable book into an unforgettable trip. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Literary Cricket