A roller-coaster ride through the depths of depravity in rural Kansas

A review of Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

She looks like a nice person, and I have no reason to believe that she isn’t. But she writes about some of the most twisted, miserable, good-for-nothing human beings imaginable.

Dark Places, the second of Gillian Flynn’s three novels to date and the second I’ve read (after her spectacular current best-seller, Gone Girl), takes a novel approach to unraveling the truth behind a 1985 mass murder in the American Heartland known as the Satanic Ritual Murders of Kinakee. Kinakee is a small, depressed farm town in Kansas, but we learn little about the town. The murders took place in the middle of the night on the small, failing farm of the Day family, where Patty Day and her four children — 15-year-old Ben, 10-year-old Michelle, and Debby and Libby, who are eight and seven respectively — have been living on the edge of starvation. Their father, Runner, has long since fled the farm, having driven it to the point of foreclosure with a series of extravagant and unnecessary equipment purchases.

Now, 24 years later, Ben is nearing 40, serving a life sentence for the murders of his mother and sisters. Libby, now 31, who survived the murders by hiding outside in the cold, has been living from the donations sent to support her and from the meager income from her book about the murders, but now the money is nearly gone. The story unfolds in chapters that alternate between Ben’s recollections of that day in January 1985, mixed with his mother’s alternate accounts, and Libby’s discoveries as the prospect of easy money that will help her avoid getting a job draws her more and more deeply into investigating the events of that day.

Flynn writes with a sure hand, and she does an outstanding job of building suspense in what seems an effortless manner. I found myself increasingly tense as the book neared its conclusion — suspecting I knew what had happened but doubting myself because it seemed so unlikely. Unfortunately, I was right, and that contrived ending is the book’s biggest flaw. But it’s a roller-coaster ride all the way to the end and well worthwhile for the thrill.

A bestselling New York Times thriller that’s worth all the fuss

A review of Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

I think I may be in love with Gillian Flynn.

This is the story of Amy Elliott Dunne and Nick Dunne, the perfect couple in the ideal marriage. It’s a storybook tale . . . or maybe it isn’t. One day Amy goes missing, and it slowly begins to dawn on you that one (or both) of the two is a sociopath. Gone Girl is plotted almost as diabolically as Catch 22. It’s near-perfect, with jaw-dropping shocks and shivers all the way to the very last page.

Amy is the Golden Girl, raised in wealth and privilege in New York’s intellectual society, brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous. She is Amazing Amy, the subject of her loving parents’ eponymous series of children’s books that instilled in a generation a powerful sense of right and wrong. Amazing Amy is everyone’s ideal.

Nick is a son of Missouri, a Tom Sawyer-like figure who grew up near Hannibal and literally once held a job impersonating Huck Finn for tourists. Himself drop-dead gorgeous and a brilliant writer, Nick is the perfect husband for the perfect woman.

As this story unfolds in Flynn’s expert hands, we learn more and more about these extraordinary people. At length, we figure out that things can’t possibly turn out well. But we can’t possibly guess how.

The style with which this thrilling tale is told is simply intoxicating. Gone Girl is one of the very best novels of of suspense I’ve ever read. For once, a novel is topping the New York Times bestseller list that isn’t (a) written on James Patterson’s assembly-line, (b) a potboiler about the rich, powerful, and famous, or (c) female S&M porn. If you have even remote interest in thrillers, read this book.