4/5 Stars
Sometimes I’m in the mood for a good crime novel. I like mysteries. I like whodunits and cop dramas and psycho-thrillers. I like them when they’re done well anyways. Unfortunately, it’s often hard for me to pick one up because the genre on the whole is pretty mediocre. It’s the genre that defines commercial fiction, that defines rehashed and recycled plotlines and clichéd characters and predictable stories. So even when I’m in the mood, I find it hard to pick up yet another alcoholic-detective-seeks-redemption-in-solving-dead-end-case kind of novel.
I want something more than that but I don’t know where to find it. I’ve idealized the crime novel and struggle with the fear of disappointment every time I pick one up. More often than not, I decide it’s not worth the risk. When I picked up Gillian Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places, I felt that same uncertainty wash over me. I bought the book a few months ago, thinking the plot sounded out-there enough to be different, dark enough to not feel like a cheap thrill. Then I forgot about it.
Yesterday, Dark Places practically jumped off my bookshelf and landed in my lap. I was in the mood, and Flynn was there for me. I had actually forgotten what the premise of the book was, but somehow knew it was what I felt like reading. I didn’t even scan the book jacket again. (Sometimes the same catchy teaser than makes me buy a book in the first place can talk me out of cracking the book once I have it.) I just started reading…
Gillian Flynn does not disappoint. I haven’t read her debut novel, Sharp Objects. But halfway through Dark Places I ordered it. And I added Gone Girl to my shopping cart as a reminder to keep my eyes peeled for the paperback (I have a weird thing about hardcovers, I don’t like holding them… ). Dark Places is exactly what I was looking for in a crime novel, a darkly atypical whodunit with an endearingly unlovable heroine.
I’m usually not that into books that switch perspective too often, I find it hard to get invested in any of the characters. But in Dark Places Flynn does the near impossible, making me equally interested in Libby Day’s present story as with the those of her brother Ben, and her mother Patty 25 years earlier—the day that Libby’s mother and two sisters were slaughtered at the family’s farm.
For years, Libby has believed her brother to be the murderer of her family. At seven years old, she testified to that fact and Ben has been serving a life sentence ever since. Libby spends the rest of her childhood being handed off from one distant relative to another as she becomes an increasingly dysfunctional and destructive child. She becomes a barely functioning adult, living off the dregs of a trust fund created for her when she was “Baby Day” the lone survivor of the Day family massacre. When the trust fund finally runs dry, Libby is forced to think about moving on with her life.
When she’s contacted by the Kansas City Kill Club, a group of true-crime enthusiasts bent on proving that Ben Day is innocent, Libby finds a way to profit once more from her disturbing past. She agrees to interview the key players from that fateful night, for a fee. Libby doesn’t plan on changing her mind about Ben, but as the truth emerges Libby becomes more and more obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family.
Flynn’s descriptions of people are poignant and painfully real. She has a way of breathing life into the unlikeliest of characters. Or rather, people so ordinary they shouldn’t make good characters. The lowest and dirtiest of her creations, the kind of people you avoid eye contact with on the street, Flynn makes them matter. She doesn’t make them likable, she makes them real. She gives every one of her characters, minor or not, a story of their own. And she does it well.
Libby Day starts out a bitch, and she pretty much ends up that way too. But she makes realistic movements towards change and growth. I appreciated the fact that Flynn didn’t try to make her into something she wasn’t, there are not great life-changing revelations for Libby. She just ends up a little less messed up than before. She connects with people in a realistic way, remaining mostly reserved, but giving in to a couple of kindred spirits. She isn’t a nice person, but she doesn’t try to be so it’s hard to hold it against her. The secondary characters are like that too. None of them are people you want to be friends with. But they’re people you believe in. That’s tough to accomplish.
The only reason that I’m not giving this one 5 starts is that I found the ending a bit too much. There was too much going on, it stretched the credibility of the plot (which is saying something, when you’re reading about Devil worshipping cult massacres). I felt almost like Flynn had two ideas for an ending and couldn’t pick, so she just went with them both. Sadly, either choice on its own would have held up. Together it was just a bit too messy (no blood-spattered pun intended).
But that being said, it was a hell of a ride. I’m more than willing to give Flynn another go. There are bits of Dark Places that I will re-read just for the language. Her simple prose hides some real imagery gems. I’m looking forward to Sharp Objects arriving in the mail. I’ll be looking to Flynn to satiate my next few hard-boiled crime novel cravings. Definitely.