Gillian Flynn's debut novel is set in a small Midwest town, and one again convinced me that American small towns must be full of dark secrets and horrors. The protagonist is Camille, a thirty something reporter from Chicago who gets sent back to her home town in Missouri for a story. Someone is killing little girls. Returning brings back memories of Camille's childhood and the loss of her young sister Marian. And then there's the dysfunctional relationship to her mother and the strangely precocious 13-year old half sister.

The plot twists weren't that hard to predict. What I enjoyed about the book was how uncomfortable it made me. There are horrors not far beneath the surface. There are no heroes, just many broken characters.