"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
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.