Dark Places

Praise

“Another winner!”—Harlan Coben

“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

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

“Dark Places’ Libby Day may seem unpleasant company at first–she’s humoring those with morbid curiosities about her family’s murders in order to get money out of them–but her steely nature and sharp tongue are compelling. ‘I have a meanness inside me,’she says, ‘real as an organ.’Yes she does, and by the end of this pitch-black novel, after we’ve loosened our grip on its cover and started breathing deeply again, we’re glad Flynn decided to share it.”—Jessa Crispin, NPR

“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 may turn out to be a more gothic John Irving for the 21st century, a writer who uses both a surgeon’s scalpel and a set of rusty harrow discs to rip the pretty face off middle America.”—San Jose Mercury News

“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

“Flynn fully inhabits Libby—a damaged woman whose world has resided entirely in her own head for the majority of her life and who is prone to dark metaphors: ‘Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.’ 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

“Deliciously creepy…Flynn follows 250-some pages of masterful plotting and character development with a speedway pileup of pulse-pounding revelations.” —Chicago Reader

“A genuinely shocking denouement.” —Romantic Times

“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

“These characters are fully realized—so true they could step off the page . . . hints of what truly happened to the Day family feel painfully, teasingly paced as they forge an irresistible trail to the truth. . . . Could. Not. Stop. Reading.”—Bookreporter

“Libby’s voice is a pitch-perfect blend of surliness and emotionally charged imagery. . . . The Kansas in these pages is a bleak, deterministic place where bad blood and lies generate horrifically unintended consequences. Though there’s little redemption here, Flynn manages to unearth the humanity buried beneath the squalor.”—Bloomberg

“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.”—Daily Mail (UK)

“Flynn’s second novel is a wonderful evocation of drab small-town life. The time-split narrative works superbly and the atmosphere is eerily macabre—Dark Places is even better than the author’s award-winning Sharp Objects.”—The Guardian (UK)

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

“Flynn’s second crime thriller tops her impressive debut, Sharp Objects. . . . When the truth emerges, it’s so twisted that even the most astute readers won’t have predicted it.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)