WILL COMBINE BOOKS TO SAVE ON POSTAGE. LARGE SIZE SOFT COVER-........Dark Places is a mystery novel by Gillian Flynn published in 2009. The novel deals with class issues in rural America, intense poverty and the Satanic cult hysteria that swept the United States in the 1980s. Dark Places was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and won Dark Scribe Magazine's Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year.