Dark Places

Libby Day has lived on the money people donated after the tragedy that made her famous: in January 1985, her mother, Patty, and her two older sisters died in their farmhouse in rural Kansas, and little Libby told the police her brother Ben was responsible. Nearly twenty-five years later the donations are gone. Then Lyle Wirth, from a group of amateur sleuths who obsess over famous crimes, offers to pay her to look into the case again.

Reluctantly, and mostly for the money, Libby begins to visit the people from that time: her father, who drifted in and out of the family, Ben's former girlfriend, and finally Ben himself in prison. The chapters set in the present alternate with chapters following Patty and Ben through the single day before the tragedy, when the family farm was failing, debts were mounting, and rumors about Ben were spreading through the small town. Slowly the two timelines draw together, and Libby is forced to question what she really saw as a frightened child.

Grim in its subject but handled without lingering on brutality, and very hard to put down. About 368 pages in paperback.