Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I became aware of Gillian Flynn when most people did: when Gone Girl, the movie, hit theaters in 2014. The book was published in 2012. Like everyone else, I thrilled to the reversal in the plot of Gone Girl, but there was something else about it that attracted me.

At a writers’ conference, I heard an author of cozy mysteries remark that there is not a single likable character in Gone Girl. It’s true. Flynn wrote a book almost everyone likes without including a character anyone can like.

I was reminded of that author’s remark a few years later In a meeting of a book club for crime fiction. We were discussing The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson, and one reader said, “It’s a book about awful people.”

True enough: Thompson introduces us to bad guys, usually in the first person. So does Patricia Highsmith, most famously in The Talented Mister Ripley. As a friend remarked of that movie, “It’s a little too dark for me.”

But not for me. I’m reading Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places, and enjoying it. The main character, Libby Day, survived a horrific experience as a child. It did not make her a better person---far from it---and the people she meets are creepy.

I like books and movies full of “awful people.” In addition to stories by Flynn, Highsmith, and Thompson, I like stories by Cornell Woolrich and James M. Cain. Other people must like them too. All these authors achieved popularity, fame and fortune in their lifetimes.

Of these authors, Flynn is the only one still alive. There must be others currently writing in this vein. Can you suggest any?