Here in the Dark: A Novel

by Alexis Soloski

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A dark and stylish novel of psychological suspense about a young theater critic drawn into a dangerous game that blurs the lines between reality and performance

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023: Bustle, Nylon, Chicago Review of Books, Entertainment Weekly, Zibby Mag, CrimeReads and more!

Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife.

Angling for a promotion, she reluctantly agrees to an interview, a conversation that reveals secrets she thought she had long since buried. Then her interviewer disappears and she learns―from his devastated fiancée―that she was the last person to have seen him alive. When the police refuse to investigate, Vivian does what she promised herself she would never do again: she plays a part. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she turns her critical gaze toward an unsanitary private eye, a sketchy internet startup, a threatening financier, fake blood, and one very real corpse. As she nears the final act, she finds that the boundaries between theater and the real world are more tenuous and more dangerous than even she could have believed. . .

Gripping, propulsive, and shot through with menace and dark glamor, Alexis Soloski’s Here in the Dark takes us behind the scenes of New York theater, lifting the curtain on the lies we tell ourselves and each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250882943
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	161,694
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Alexis Soloski is a prize-winning New York Times culture reporter and a former lead theater critic at The Village Voice. She has taught at Barnard College and at Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in theater. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Here in the Dark is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

09/18/2023

An acid-tongued New York City theater critic investigates a stranger’s disappearance in Soloski’s uneven debut. Vivian Parry quit acting after her mother’s death triggered a downward spiral that led to a drug overdose. Now a junior theater critic at a Manhattan magazine, Vivian mimics the functions of a healthy person by day so she can lose herself in a new play every night. When graduate student David Adler asks to interview Vivian for his thesis in exchange for a spot on a panel he’s organizing at a prestigious conference, she agrees; the exposure could land her a promotion. She ends the interview abruptly, however, after David’s questions take a pointed and personal turn. Weeks later, David’s fiancée calls, claiming Vivian was the last person to see him before he vanished. A little digging reveals that David’s promised panel never existed. Vivian embarks on a sex-and-substance-fueled quest to locate David and suss out his motives for contacting her, leading her to cross paths with a private investigator and a sketchy online gambling startup. Though Vivian’s self-destructive tendencies and jaundiced first-person narrative nod at noir, Soloski’s plot and characters lack nuance and authenticity. Theatergoers may appreciate Vivian’s copious references to classic plays, but crime fiction fans are likely to be left wanting. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Company. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-09-21
When a New York theater critic is drawn into playing amateur detective, her dark world gets even darker.

"I am, of necessity, an imitation of myself—a sharp smile, an acid joke, an abyss where a woman should be. For a decade and more I have allowed myself only this lone role, a minor one: Vivian Parry, actor’s scourge and girl-about-town." In her debut, Soloski, a culture reporter at the New York Times, crafts a thriller narrated by Vivian Parry, a brittle, unhappy, relentlessly clever theater critic. Since her mother's untimely death when she was a college student snuffed out her desire and ability to be on stage, Vivian has found her only pleasure in attending plays and issuing brutal assessments of them expressed in “diamond bright” prose, coupled with daily recourse to pills, alcohol, and casual sex. Shortly after she deigns to be interviewed by a whiny man named David Adler for his master’s thesis, she receives a visit from his tearful fiancee saying he has disappeared and Vivian is the last person who saw him. As utterly out of character as it seems, she decides to go undercover to investigate Adler's disappearance; this is both preceded and followed by many more credibility-stretching events. It's worth at least pretending to suspend disbelief and ride out Vivian's Lost Weekend death spiral for whole slew of reasons—fun supporting characters (a louche actress best friend, a flamboyant receptionist at Vivian's magazine), ultra-snappy dialogue and metaphors, rough sex (if you like that sort of thing), and finally an over-the-top payoff that neatly pulls all the wild threads together, followed by a totally impossible but nonetheless touching denouement.

Like Dorothy Parker, the narrator's role model, this book is almost too clever for its own good.

Kirkus Reviews

"Alexis Soloski’s debut—a sharp, captivating thriller about a cynical theater critic who gets pulled into an investigation of a stranger’s disappearance—is a suspenseful page-turner filled with complex characters.... Good luck not finishing it in one sitting." —Bustle

"Soloski smoothly transfers her masterful journalistic writing to this novel, creating a classic yet entirely modern noir. Fast-paced, funny, sexy, and witty, Here in the Dark is a satisfying read to the very last word." —Chicago Review of Books

"Here in the Dark moves briskly as Soloski nicely incorporates character development in the plot that accelerates into the noir. Theatergoers especially will enjoy Vivian’s references to classic and modern plays." —South Florida Sun Sentinel

"A tightly paced and expertly crafted noir whose heroine is both hilariously wisecracking and deeply troubled. From curtain up to curtain call, Here in the Dark is flawless." —Bookpage (starred review)

"How could I resist a suspense novel in which a critic becomes an amateur detective in order to avoid becoming a murder suspect or even a victim? I inhaled Alexis Soloski's debut thriller, Here in the Dark; but, even readers who don't feel a professional kinship with Soloski's main character should be drawn to this moody and erudite mystery. Soloski... [has] written a genuinely disturbing suspense tale that explores the theater of cruelty life can sometimes be." —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

"Twisty, foreboding, addictive, Here in the Dark is the perfect noir, a novel that blurs truth and fiction, and at the very end delivers a stinger that turns everything on its head. You’ll think about it the next time you’re sitting in the dark, waiting for the curtain to rise. Don’t be surprised if there’s something unsettling on the other side of it." —BookTrib

"Frightening, delicious, engrossing, and unforgettable." —Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness

"Theater critic Alexis Soloski goes behind the curtain in this thriller about the blurry lines between art and reality.... Soloski combines her knowledge of the theater world with the twists and turns of the best psychological suspense." —Entertainment Weekly

"A moody, taut dose of noir, Here in the Dark is a poised, daring debut—the kind of novel I relish and can't get out of my head, evoking the work of icons like Megan Abbott and Margaret Millar in its hypnotic prose and mesmerizing characters. Readers will not forget Vivian Parry—and they won't want to." —Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity

"Soloski does not disappoint—in either her sharp-eyed and unflinching portrait of an unravelling critic, or in her delicious upending of genre. Hitchcock meets a slippery metatheatrics of power, performance, desire, and escape. This is a novel—and a protagonist—who moves with a precarious velocity, constantly choosing the most dangerous move and bringing us careening after." —Jen Silverman, author of We Play Ourselves

"From its very first page to its final revelation, Here in the Dark will possess you with a mix of acerbic wit and Highsmithian invention. I blazed through this book, delighting equally in the cleverness of its plot and the delicious wickedness of Vivian Parry—a woman you can’t look away from even for a second. And why would you, when there’s a life-or-death mystery, dialogue that feels beamed in from a classic noir, and a ballet about rabies on offer? Even if you’ve never seen a play, you’ll be thrilled by the ways author Alexis Soloski takes the novel of suspense and turns it into a meditation on seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, judging and being judged." —Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to ACT

"Here in the Dark lives up to its title and is indeed a dark tale; it’s also hilarious, addictive, elegantly constructed, and composed. It’s ultimately a book about art and the love of art, but it's cleverly disguised as a thrill ride, a jolt of pulp and a shot of noir. It became a New York classic to me the minute I read the last sentence." —Michael Imperioli, actor, writer, and musician

From the Publisher