January 13, 2015
This is the second book I've read by Flynn. Unlike her wildly successful Gone Girl, this one (an earlier work, I think) is a bit more conventional as far as how the main character, Libby, goes about solving the mystery. But like Gone Girl, the characters are complex and often despicable. It wasn't quite as satisfying as Flynn's biggest success to date, but it still held my interest all the way through.
I have issues with the development of Libby Day. When she was seven, her mother and two older sisters were murdered, and her older brother was put away in prison for it. Since then, she was angry, fearful, and disconnected. As a grown woman, not much older than myself, she's never held a job and can't even remember to change her bedsheets. She feels entitled to pity and money, because that's all people have ever really given her. But at 31, the pity and the money are running out. When she's offered a few hundred bucks to appear at a convention for murder investigation enthusiasts, she jumps at it...and it changes her whole life.
Her outrage and disbelief about the alternative theories to her family's murders is understandable. She testified against her brother, although she didn't actually see what happened, only heard snatches of shouting and the shotgun blast from her hiding place. Libby was basically made to believe that her brother did it. That belief was, supposedly, deeply ingrained in her. So of course she's upset when people try to say otherwise, and call her a liar.
But her about-face regarding her brother's guilt seemed too swift. After just one interview with Ben, her incarcerated brother, she's more or less determined to know the truth. I feel like this wasn't entirely realistic. At first she only visits Ben and other figures in the mystery for the money from the "Kill Club" and Ben's supporters. But she throws herself into their investigation.
More interesting than Libby's search are the chapters between them. They follow Ben and Patty, their mother, during the hours leading up to the murders. Shit's hitting the fan for the Day family. Patty is so deep in debt that she's about to lose the family farm, and Ben is being accused of molesting little girls at school. He had a friendly relationship with a fifth grader, and one day after school, she kissed him. He got a boner, freaked out, and ran away. I work with legitimate teenage sex offenders; Ben was no sex offender.
So the day of the murders is tense, presenting several scenarios for who the real killer might be. In the end, the situation is quite a mess, but it all fits. Besides the unrealistic development of Libby's character, I was satisfied with this book. Obviously, it never received even close to the amount of attention as that one other book. It wasn't even on my radar before I read Gone Girl. But Flynn is an exciting author, and being pretty new to the scene and just recently becoming famous, I hope she'll publish more.
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