Alexis Soloski is a prize-winning New York Times theater critic and a former lead theater critic at the Village Voice. She has taught at Barnard College and at Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in Theater. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Here in the Dark is her first novel.
Here in the Dark lives up to its title and is indeed a dark tale; it’s also hilarious, addictive, elegantly constructed, and composed. It’s ultimately a book about art and the love of art, but it's cleverly disguised as a thrill ride, a jolt of pulp and a shot of noir. It became a New York classic to me the minute I read the last sentence -- Michael Imperioli, actor, writer, and musician 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 From its very first page to its final revelation, Here in the Dark will possess you with a mix of acerbic wit and Highsmithian invention. I blazed through this book, delighting equally in the cleverness of its plot and the delicious wickedness of Vivian Parry?a woman you can’t look away from even for a second. And why would you, when there’s a life-or-death mystery, dialogue that feels beamed in from a classic noir, and a ballet about rabies on offer? Even if you’ve never seen a play, you’ll be thrilled by the ways author Alexis Soloski takes the novel of suspense and turns it into a meditation on seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, judging and being judged -- Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to ACT