As someone who grew up in rural Kansas and has lived in the suburbs of Kansas City for the last fourteen years, I made my peace long ago with the fact that I don't reside in one of the hip places on the map. The only Kansas based things that have worked their way into popular culture are In Cold Blood and that goddamn Wizard of Oz. (As a Kansan, I listen to everyone I've met from somewhere else do the "I guess you're not in Kansas anymore! Ha ha!" thing and can barely resist the urge to punch them in the throat.) 
 But it seems like every book, film or tv show is set in either New York or L.A. with a few other places like Miami, Chicago or Boston thrown in now and then. I think half the reason I'm such a huge fan of John Sandford is that most of his books are set in Minneapolis, and he's shown that there actually is life in the Midwest. I know that the folks who run the various entertainment industries like to talk about getting us off our tractors long enough to sample their wares, but it seems like the only attempts to include us in the stories either mock us as morons or sentimentalize small town life to vomit inducing degrees. 
 Gillian Flynn is originally from Kansas City, and her first book was very well received so I was excited to hear that Dark Places was set in both rural Kansas and K.C. Of course, it involved the slaughter of a family on the prairie, going back to the In Cold Blood thing, but I'll take what I can get. I was excited to get one of the rare chances to read a story set in the place I live. 
 Unfortunately, Flynn didn't do her old hometown any favors because it seems like she singled out every depressing aspect like the run down old stockyards and warehouse district that's got some of the worst urban decay in the area. Or I-70 between K.C. and St. Louis that is filled with tacky billboards and low rent strip clubs. One restaurant that she uses as a location recently burned to the ground, and its owner is charged with arson. I know she was telling a story about the aftermath of a brutal crime and how it screwed up the sole survivor, but damn! Would it have killed her to have a character pop down to Power & Light for a drink? The K.C. tourism board would have thanked her for it. 
 Enough of my bitching. About the book: Back in 1985 on a rundown Kansas farm, a mother and two daughters are brutally killed. Young Libby Day manages to survive by fleeing the house, and it's her testimony that convicts her fifteen year old brother Ben of the crime. Supposedly, Ben was a Satan worshipping freak who went shotgun and axe happy one winter night. 
 In the present, thirty-one year old Libby is a freaking mess. She doesn't make it out of bed some days, she's a kleptomaniac, she has no friends, and she usually can't even manage to take care of simple things like remembering to buy cat food, wash her sheets or fill her ice cube trays. 
 Libby has been living off the trust fund that started when donations poured in after the murders, but the money is about to run out. Desperate, Libby agrees to a paid appearance for the Kill Club, a group of amateur investigators who think that her brother is innocent. Libby doesn't even want to think about her brother, but offers of more cash get her motivated to start visiting people connected to the murders. Suddenly, Libby isn't so sure that Ben was the killer after all. 
 The story is told in two parallel ways. We get Libby's first person account of her activities in the present, while a third person narrative of the last day of her family gives us the background of what happened in 1985. 
 This is a character based mystery, and Flynn does a great job with both the struggling Libby in the present and the family in 1985. The stark reality of a poor farm family in the mid-'80s along with Libby's pathetic life as an adult makes for a pretty depressing story, but Flynn really sucks the reader into the plight of everyone involved. I was somewhat let down by the ending, but I can't say much about that without spoilers. 
 While this book probably won't convince anyone to move to Kansas, it's a good read for those who don't mind a raw story about just how much life can sometimes suck, even if you don't get chopped to bits with an axe.