Here in the Dark

A Novel

By: Alexis Soloski

Narrated by: Laura Benanti

This program is read by Tony Award–winning actor Laura Benanti.

A dark and stylish novel of psychological suspense about a young theater critic drawn into a dangerous game that blurs the lines between reality and performance

Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife.

Angling for a promotion, she reluctantly agrees to an interview, a conversation that reveals secrets she thought she had long since buried. Then her interviewer disappears and she learns―from his devastated fiancée―that she was the last person to have seen him alive. When the police refuse to investigate, Vivian does what she promised herself she would never do again: she plays a part. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she turns her critical gaze toward an unsanitary private eye, a sketchy internet startup, a threatening financier, fake blood, and one very real corpse. As she nears the final act, she finds that the boundaries between theater and the real world are more tenuous and more dangerous than even she could have believed. . .

Gripping, propulsive, and shot through with menace and dark glamor, Alexis Soloski’s Here in the Dark takes us behind the scenes of New York theater, lifting the curtain on the lies we tell ourselves and each other.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

©2023 Alexis Soloski (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Theater critic Alexis Soloski goes behind the curtain in this thriller about the blurry lines between art and reality.... Soloski combines her knowledge of the theater world with the twists and turns of the best psychological suspense."—Entertainment Weekly

"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

Almost clever

This story was good at bringing the reader into the world of New York theater. The characters felt real but were not relatable. The story was fun but you could see the twist coming from a city block away.

Good narration, bad material

I disliked the protagonist. She’s more of an anti-hero. I wanted the nice guy to stay away from her and while I understand that bad choices are what creates drama, this was really icky in places. The writing was pretentious and had excessive similes. Good narration.

Narrator Laura Benanti makes this amazing!

I LOVED THIS SCREWBALL COMEDY!!

What a silly premise: a theatre critic becomes a self-destructive sleuth when she inadvertently is involved in a missing person’s case which leads to her becoming a murder suspect.

Vivian Parry is a minor theater critic at a no-named magazine in NYC. She’s one hot mess. When the magazine’s chief critic position opens, she thinks she’s got a shot.

A grad student by the name of David Adler requests an interview with Vivian. Normally the caustic Vivian would not grant such an interview to such a lowly person. Given the job vacancy, she believes this might propel her chances for advancement, so she grants it. This lowly grad student knows more about Vivian than he should, and Vivian wants to know where he got this information. It could harm her chances of promotion!

Well, Mr. Adler goes missing, and Vivian becomes a person of interest. Let the madcap adventure begin. Author Alexis Soloski has some fun with Russian mobsters, lots of Ativan, sex, and vodka. Vivian goes down the rabbit-hole of crazy. This is fun! The one-liners! The
theater references!

I chose the audio format, narrated by the amazing Laura Benanti. It was her performance that made this a 5-star book for me! I’m unsure what my rating would have been if I had read it. Benanti knocks it out of the park in her dramatization, and if any book needs a dramatic narrator, it’s this one.

At the end of the audio there is a bonus conversation with Soloski and Benanti which is fun. Soloski related that what happened to Vivian happened to her: she was the last person who saw a person who went missing. She was inadvertently involved in a missing person’s case. Soloski surmised: what if that happened to someone who was emotionally unstable. How would that person react?

Treat yourself to Soloski’s romp! There is a major plot twist that I didn’t see coming; I loved this story. So very clever.

All-Around Excellence

Amazing character development is achieved through clever, witty, and heartfelt dialogue - both internal and external; well-drawn secondary characters; and flashbacks to momentous occurences in the protagonist’s life. High suspense is maintained throughout and the narration couldn’t be better.
There’s also an extremely interesting interview between the author and narrator right after the story’s ending.