Alone in the Dark – Joanne Ryan

She witnessed a murder… but nobody’s dead. It was a quiet night, like any other, when Abi went for her usual night-time run. It was her escape from all the stresses of life, the thing she did so she was stronger than the man who’d once hurt her so badly.

But then – as she turns a quiet corner – she sees a car hitting somebody. Rushing forward, as the driver screeches off into the night, she realizes the man in the road has already died.

After rushing to call for help, Abi returns to find a policeman already waiting. But there’s no body. No one is there.

Abi knows what she saw. But everyone else thinks she’s lost her mind. Everyone except one person. Who wants her to stay silent.. forever.

Review

Well, I think I now have a new favourite book from Joanne Ryan after having read her previous one, Don’t Let Her In. Alone in the Dark positions itself now as the top 1 book from her (in my opinion, obviously).

I also had the privilege of reading Don’t Let Her In as an advanced copy, and as I’ve mentioned with The Lodger and The Double, her writing has consistently improved over the years, making her trajectory as an author fun to read. You notice the prolificness showing, not just in her technical writing but also in how she develops the plot into something more interesting for the story she wants to tell and doesn’t stall now.

In Alone in the Dark, we follow Abi, who witnesses a crash-and-run, and the plot kickstarts when she comes back from phoning the police for help only to find the victim gone from the scene. Abi has major Girl on the Train/Woman in the Window syndrome going on; the author wants the reader to feel how Abi is seen by her community as a bit of an unreliable narrator, but I didn’t really get its full effect. The clues were subtly introduced, not overtly but gradually, revealing connections between some characters that I suspected from the start and felt actually vindicated about! I really like when clues aren’t there just to throw you off or just be like “Oh well, this is suspicious”, they were actually incorporated into the story just so naturally and flowed well.

The side story was heartfelt and was a quite nice addition to the main plot about the mystery surrounding the accident. It added humanity and sense to it… it was a bit terrifying at times, I’m not gonna lie.

This book is the best I’ve read from Joanne Ryan in terms of writing; personally, I think it is up there with Don’t Let Her In.