Val McDermid Gillian Flynn is the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre.

Dark Places demonstrates that was no fluke. Kate Atkinson With her blistering debut Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn hit the ground running. I would rather read her than just about any other crime writer. Truly gripping, with a real twist, this is a great second novel from Gillian Flynn - Marie Jenkinson WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY Gillian Flynn's writing is compulsively good. But is he capable of murder?In a brilliantly interwoven plot, Gillian Flynn keeps the reader balanced on a knife-edge, as Libby delves into her family's past and Ben spirals towards destruction. When the town suddenly turns against him, his thoughts turn black. Through her, Ben becomes involved with drugs and the dark arts.

But Ben does have a girlfriend - a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. His family is extremely poor, and his father Runner is violent, gambles and disappears for months on end. Ben is a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lives. It is 2 January 1985 - the day of the murders. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over twenty years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'.

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard.

Dark places by gillian flynn