Working well below a crime novel's usual lows, "Dark Places" attempts the long climb upward for Libby Day, one of two surviving members of her family's brutal and inexplicable murder. Novels this bleak are an acquired taste, but Flynn's superior characters and her ability to make even the inhuman understandable (if never exactly sympathetic) simultaneously elevate the class of her book while painting its corners ever darker. One of the few books I've read that might require a little Day break, if you know what I mean, but overall a true-ringing, exceedingly well populated novel.
