Here in the Dark

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Here in the Dark by Alexis Soloski, read by Laura Benanti.

'Impressive' Financial Times
'Terrific' Guardian
'Elegant' Laura Shepperson

By night, Vivian Parry performs the role of Manhattan's sharpest literary 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.

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 – 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
Best book I’ve read this year… the most interesting, funny and outrageous voice I have read in so long
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Fleishmann is in Trouble
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
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
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

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