The best thing about Gillian Flynn’s Dark Objects is that it allowed me to wax nostalgically about the Satanic Panic of the 80s, a phenomenon I had completely forgotten until this book.

I don’t know how it slipped my mind. Heavy metal and satan-worshipping was as much a part of the 80s as side-ponytails and Cyndi Lauper. But this is beside the point. The point here is that I read Flynn’s second-novel Dark Objects and for the first time in my Flynn-reading spree I was actively annoyed by her storytelling.

In this mystery we have Libby Day, the only survivor of The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas back in the 80s. Today finds Libby a thirty-something laze-about who has spent the twentyish years since her brother, Ben, killed her mother and two sisters living off the donations of strangers. But the money’s running out and Libby gets mixed up with the ridiculously named Kill Club, a club devoted to famous murders and murderers.

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