Murders & Witch Watch

By Brian Truitt

“Dark Places”
By Gillian Flynn (Shaye Areheart, $24 hardcover)

Gillian Flynn sent chills through the fiction community with her debut “Sharp Objects,” and she ups the psychological complexity for “Dark Places.” Seven-year-old Libby witnesses the murder of her mom and two sisters, then fingers her teenage brother as the culprit. Fast-forward 25 years later, and a secret society enamored with high-profile crimes wants her to interview her imprisoned sibling, making Libby some good money. Yet revisiting her past digs up some unrevealed secrets. The truth may come back to kill her.

“Who Killed Art Deco?”
By Chuck Barris (Simon & Schuster, $14 paperback)

For years, he saw the weirdest and wackiest game-show contestants ever. He wrote an “autobiography” about his supposed life as a secret agent for the CIA. And now Chuck Barris, the creator of “The Gong Show” and “The Dating Game,” is channeling his inner Elmore Leonard for this satiric crime novel. Barris’ hero is a rookie detective whose job is to solve the murder of ne’er-do-well heir Art Deco, query his former gigolo boyfriend and Art’s upper-crust family, and get past his own investigative ineptitude.

“The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane”
By Katherine Howe (Voice, $25.99 hardcover)

“Harry Potter” meets “The Da Vinci Code” in this engrossing fiction that assumes the victims of the Salem Witch Trials were actually witches. Who knew? Certainly not Harvard grad student Connie Goodwin, who puts off summer research to watch over the sale of her grandma’s Salem, Mass., home. Connie finds a mysterious key hidden inside a Bible that sends Connie on a journey to find out her own connection to the witch hunts of the 1690s and what the heck a “physick book” is.

(June 2009)