Here in the Dark

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What to expect

By night, Vivian Parry performs the role of Manhattan’s sharpest theatre critic, immersing herself fully in every show she sees. By day, she uses work, sex, and psychotropic drugs to keep her comfortably numb.

Desperate for a promotion and at the urging of her editor, she agrees to an interview with David Adler, an enigmatic graduate student. When he later disappears, Vivian soon learns from his devastated fiancée that she was the last person to have seen him alive. The police refuse to investigate his disappearance and Vivian finds herself obsessed with what happened, assuming the role of amateur investigator.

But as she gets closer to the truth about David Adler, she finds that the boundaries between theatre and reality are more tenuous than even she could have believed.

'An impressive debut' Financial Times
'A sharp, funny, and pacy slice of Manhattan noir' Guardian

Critics Review

  • Alexis Soloski portrays Manhattan’s thespian scene and high-end social life in vivid detail with snappy dialogue. This is an impressive debut

    Financial Times
  • A sharp, funny and pacy slice of Manhattan noir that manages to be over-the-top and weirdly plausible, with a terrific payoff

    Guardian
  • Alexis Soloski’s debut novel is an elegant, chilling read that examines the lives of critics, actors, and addicts. It poses the question: can you know or even have your own identity, when your entire life is spent acting? Recommended for lovers of New York and the theatre, this is a taut, beautifully written psychological thriller that dares to delve into the darkness behind the curtains

    Laura Shepperson
  • 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
  • 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

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