Jesus, what tripe. This is a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person’s mystery is. It’s chock full of badly fleshed stock characters, entirely too many un-shocking developments that Flynn clearly sees as revelatory, and runs out of steam well before it runs out of pages. There is not a single “surprise” in the book that isn’t telegraphed WAY WAY WAY in advance, and that any halfway intelligent reader will see coming.
I’m reminded of something Dorothy Parker said: “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
The only upside is that I now have a CLEAR CHOICE for “worst book read this year,” whereas before it was a tossup between The Night Circus and Empire State — neither are even in the same league of awfulness as Flynn, so congrats for that.
You know, throwing it with great force was exactly what my wife did upon finishing Gone Girl. And it was quite a mystery why it was so popular (#1 on the Times list for far longer than any other novel this year) and so critically slobbered on. Several people, including my boss, whose opinions on fiction I usually trust loved it. After Sally’s reaction, I wouldn’t go near it. Go get you some Dennis Lehane or something to get the taste out of your mouth.
In fact, next up was Patton Oswalt’s book (post coming); I’m now into Iain Banks’ Player of Games.