Dark Places

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.

The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club… and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.

Gillian Flynn is the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre. — Stephen King

Another winner! — Harlan Coben

With her blistering debut Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn hit the ground running. Dark Places demonstrates that was no fluke. — Val McDermid

A gritty, riveting thriller with a one-of-a-kind, tart-tongued heroine. — Booklist (starred review)

Edgar-finalist Flynn’s second crime thriller tops her impressive debut, Sharp Objects. . . . Flynn fluidly moves between cynical present-day Libby and the hours leading up to the murders through the eyes of her family members. When the truth emerges, it’s so twisted that even the most astute readers won’t have predicted it.
 — Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

Gillian Flynn’s writing is compulsively good. I would rather read her than just about any other crime writer. — Kate Atkinson

Dark Places grips you from the first page and doesn’t let go. — Karin Slaughter

Tough, surprising crime fiction that dips its toes in the deeper waters of literary fiction. — Chicago Sun-Times

Disturbing and original. — New York Magazine

Flynn’s well-paced story deftly shows the fallibility of memory and the lies a child tells herself to get through a trauma. — The New Yorker

A riveting tale of true horror by a writer who has all the gifts to pull it off. — Chicago Tribune

Sardonic, riveting . . . Like Kate Atkinson, Flynn has figured out how to fuse the believable characters, silken prose and complex moral vision of literary fiction to the structure of a crime story. . . . You can sense trouble coming like a storm moving over the prairie, but can’t quite detect its shape. — Laura Miller, Salon.com

Flynn returns to the front ranks of emerging thriller writers with her aptly titled new novel . . . Those who prefer their literary bones with a little bloody meat will be riveted. — Portland Oregonian

Gillian Flynn coolly demolished the notion that little girls are made of sugar and spice in Sharp Objects, her sensuous and chilling first thriller. In DARK PLACES, her equally sensuous and chilling follow-up, Flynn…has conjured up a whole new crew of feral and troubled young females….[A] propulsive and twisty mystery. — Entertainment Weekly

The world of this novel is all underside, all hard flinch, and Flynn’s razor-sharp prose intensifies this effect as she knuckles in on every sentence. . .  . The slick plotting in Dark Places will gratify the lover of a good thriller—but so, too, will Flynn’s prose, which is ferocious and unrelenting and pure pleasure from word one. — Cleveland Plain Dealer

Gillian Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places, proves that her first—Sharp Objects—was no fluke. . . . tough, surprising crime fiction that dips its toes in the deeper waters of literary fiction. — Chicago Sun-Times

Clever, engrossing and disturbing….[DARK PLACES] should cement [Flynn’s] place in the great authors of crime fiction. — Crimespree

Disturbing and original . . . It’s Flynn’s gift that she can make a caustic, self-loathing, unpleasant protagonist someone you come to root for. — The New York Magazine

Flynn fully inhabits Libby—a damaged woman whose world has resided entirely in her own head for the majority of her life . . . Half the fun of Dark Places is Libby’s swampy psychology, which Flynn leads us through without the benefit of hip waders. — Time Out Chicago

Flynn follows 250-some pages of masterful plotting and character development with a speedway pileup of pulse-pounding revelations—one WTF! after the next. — Chicago Reader

Set in the bleak Midwest of America, this evocation of small-town life and dysfunctional people is every bit as horribly fascinating as Capote’s journalistic retelling of a real family massacre, In Cold Blood, which it eerily resembles.  This is only Flynn’s second crime novel – her debut was the award-winning Sharp Objects – and demonstrates even more forcibly her precocious writing ability and talent for the macabre. — London Daily Mail

Gillian Flynn’s debut Sharp Objects was brilliant, a compulsive thriller that led Stephen King to declare her ‘the real deal’.  Dark Places is even better…  Many thriller writers are good at plotting and suspense, but their prose doesn’t sing.  Flynn’s writing is sharp, punchy, visceral.  A stormer, even for those who don’t usually ‘do’ thrillers. — thelondonpaper