Thriller
Dark Places
by Gillian Flynn
Quick take
Truth often hides in dark places but here is a woman who will stop at nothing until it’s brought to light.
Good to know
Famous author
Rural
Murder
Now a movie
Synopsis
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben.
Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.
Why I love it
Book of the Month
Gillian Flynn’s novels are so much fun to read because her plots are super creepy, yet her deeply flawed characters are still somehow relatable. While Gone Girl is the perfect embodiment of domestic suspense taken to extremes, Flynn’s previous novel, Dark Places, is more of a freak show carnival ride of crime fiction. When Libby Day was seven years old, her older brother killed their family in a night of horrors.
Or did he?
Twenty-five years later, prompted by a cultish club of groupies obsessed with solving famous crimes, she starts looking into what really happened that night. And you will never guess (literally) what she discovers.
Intriguing characters, crazy plot twists, shocks and horrors—every Gillian Flynn fan should read this book.