Killer thriller!
This intense yarn will keep you in the dark to the end
Twists are mandatory in any psychological thriller these days. Sometimes they can be a bit lame and you see them coming a mile off. One of the reasons that A Flicker in the Dark is clever is that it lulls you into a false sense that you are about to work everything out. And then wham, buckle up, because things aren’t how they seem.
Chloe Davis is the daughter of a serial killer. When she was a child, her father was convicted of the murders of six teenage girls whose bodies were never found, and Chloe’s life ever since has been scarred by the experience.
She is now a respected psychologist in Baton Rouge and planning a wedding to the fiancé she adores but, not surprisingly, beneath the surface Chloe is a mess. She is crippled by anxiety, selfmedicating with prescription drugs and still haunted by her father, who is in prison. So when on the 20th anniversary of his crime spree another girl goes missing, it seems like the nightmare is starting again.
While her father isn’t to blame this time, Chloe begins to fear that the person responsible for the copycat crimes must be someone else close to her. As she starts searching for answers, she becomes increasingly paranoid.
Dark, claustrophobic and intense, the story moves back and forth between Chloe’s disturbing childhood memories and her terrifying present. She is a highly unreliable narrator, confused and mentally unwell and that, combined with the red herrings strewn through the story, mean that the final third of the book is dramatic. Up to that point, it is a
reasonably slow burn; mostly an exploration of Chloe’s muddled mind as she tries to piece together the clues she finds.
There is already a TV adaptation of this tightly written and atmospheric story in the pipeline, starring Emma Stone. A Flicker in the Dark kept me gripped and kept me guessing.