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45 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brutal, Evocative Murder Mystery, Deftly Plotted and Utterly Fascinating, May 4, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Libby Day was seven years old when her mother and two sisters were massacred in a blood-soaked home invasion dubbed by the press as "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas." It was Libby's testimony which put her then-fifteen-year old brother, Ben, into prison for the rest of his life for the heinous murders.
Now, it is almost twenty-five years later, and Libby, depressed, angry and broke has agreed to attend a meeting of the Kill Club, a strange conglomerate of people obsessed with famous murders. Some of the Kill Club members have become interested in the murders of Libby's family because they are convinced that Ben has been wrongly convicted. After meeting with the Kill Club, Libby, although still sure that Ben is the murderer, decides to try to make some cash from her family's grisly history by charging the Kill Club members to interview people who might have further information about the murders.
In hauntingly compelling prose, this wonderfully talented author deftly unfolds the story of what really happened during the early morning hours of January 3, 1985, and how searching for, and uncovering, that truth will change the lives of Libby and Ben.
The book is told in an interesting intermittent flashback format, with Libby, tough and damaged from her horrific childhood, narrating the present-day chapters in first-person, while the flashback chapters, told in third-person, describe the actions of several key characters on one winter's day in 1985.
Besides Libby, the most fascinating character in the book is that of Ben, the awkward, aimless, angry boy, tottering on the brink of manhood. Ben, yearning for the father-figure which he never had, and being raised in a poverty-stricken household by a single overwhelmed mother, surrounded by bothersome little sisters, is such a troubled, unlikeable protagonist. Yet this author makes the reader see the good in Ben and how much he wants to fit in, even as the story moves the angst-ridden teenager inexorably toward the unspeakable crimes which are at the center of the narrative.
This author's prose style is unique, complex and utterly creative. She is almost Dickensian in her ability to paint a word picture of a situation or a character in a few phrases. For instance, in the first chapter Libby describes herself after the murders: "Little Orphan Libby grew up sullen and boneless, shuffled around a group of lesser relatives...stuck in a series of mobile homes or rotting ranch houses all across Kansas." When Libby sees her brother Ben for the first time in almost twenty-five years, she views him through the glass at the visiting room at the prison: "He looked so much the same, pale face, that Day knob of a nose. He hadn't even grown much since the murders. Like we all got stunted that night."
This novel is a fascinating murder mystery, but it is so much more than that. It is a wise, evocative character study -- a glimpse into the lives of people who are lost and are struggling to find their way in a dangerous world. Some never find a path, some show others a path, and some find refuge -- which can be either heaven or hell. But all of these people -- for better or worse -- matter, and their intertwined lives are a lesson to the reader that even the tiniest action may have huge unintended consequences.
Highly recommended.
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36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well Written, but Too Mean Spirited for My Tastes, May 8, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Gillian Flynn's an awfully talented writer, but I must admit to not being a fan of the types of stories she chooses to tell. While DARK PLACES contains a lot of great prose and some compelling moments, it's ultimately a rather mean-spirited novel that doesn't add up to very much.
DARK PLACES is a crime story about dysfunctional people doing nasty things to one another. Its brutally effective, but its narrative power is diminished by Flynn's failure to provide her characters with any true depth. Instead, she presents a cast of caricatured characters who are for the most part either borderline psychotics or pathetic neurotics. While all these characters are colorful, very few of them rang true to me, and almost all of them are unlikable.
To Flynn's credit, she does construct an interesting mystery in DARK PLACES, and the novel does succeed as a pageturner. But I found myself deeply let down by the mystery's resolution, which is based on an almost ridiculous series of coincidences. The ending reads like something that Flynn threw together at the last minute, which is bitterly disappointing given the long build-up.
In short, DARK PLACES is a compelling novel, but one that features a lot of ugly characters and dark situations. If you like novels like Scott Phillips' THE ICE HARVEST or Flynn's first novel SHARP OBJECTS, you may enjoy this book a great deal. But in the end, it just wasn't my cup of tea.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting and disturbing..., April 6, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Who killed Libby Day's family? This is the mystery that is presented on the first page and the subsequent chapters detail Libby's attempt - half-hearted at first, to get the answers she so desperately needs in order for her to get on track in life. The book alternates points of view from Libby in present day to various characters from the past - describing the events that led up to, and include the infamous day of the murders twenty-five years previous - January 2, 1985.
The book is paced and the author writes excellent and well developed descriptions of the characters - Libby's mother, aunt Diane, sisters and brother - as well as of the setting of the Kinnakee, Kansas farm and Libby's house on the bluff in Kansas City, Missouri. (As a KCMO native, I was surprised to find a book set in this Midwest city because it is so rare and I really enjoyed that fact about the book.)
Because of the way the novel is written, the various points of view in each chapter are used to advance Libby's determination and investigation into actually and finally finding out who killed her family and why. The plot is revealed in layers and the reader isn't quite sure how all of this is going to come together - but it does. This is not a heart pounding thriller, but a more dark and plodding one - you know that denouement is just around the corner - you're hoping that Libby is going to get the information she wants as she confronts first one and then another of the surviving family and others involved with the search for the killer(s) of her family. Indeed, the hangers on - the Kill Club members - and her father, the loser Runner, only add to her consternation as she seems thwarted at every turn. Even her own brother, Ben, imprisoned by her testimony, seems to put roadblocks up instead of providing answers in the case.
This is not a book for the squeamish and describes some grisly scenes that include depictions of bloody murder and one of senseless animal torture. Libby, the protagonist, is not a loveable character, but one who grows on the reader as we are drawn into her world. We almost feel her lassitude and recognize how much energy her efforts cost her. We root for her, but are wondering if we really do want to know the answers. Is Ben guilty or not? No one associated with this crime is free of criminal association or above suspicion.
All in all - a good whodunit with a very appropriate ending.
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