Rating:

The Dark Side of Social Media

Author: Megan Goldin

A beloved van-life influencer, Maddison Logan, has vanished. Suspected serial killer Terrance Bailey was the last person to see her. Why did she visit him in jail? What did she say to him during their tense meeting, and why did she recommend that he contact true-crime podcaster Rachel Krall? With the killer soon to finish his sentence, police are clamoring for more evidence to keep this dangerous man off the streets and find out how he is connected to Maddison’s disappearance. They have long suspected that he did not act alone. With time running out, striking FBI agent Joe Martinez asks Rachel to meet with the killer and see what she can find. Rachel soon becomes invested, and despite the danger, she goes undercover at an influencer convention to unlock the trauma behind Maddison’s too-good-to-be-true Instagram life.

Following the insanely popular Night Swim, which I honestly thought was just ok, author Megan Goldin steps back into Rachel Krall’s shoes. Rachel is still running her popular, deep-dive true crime podcast. She is renowned for getting to the truth behind the story, having exonerated several wrongly accused defendants. As before, the true story finds her. What follows is a stop-start investigation with many twists and turns and tricks. Not everything is relevant. Some things are coincidental, and many are totally overwrought or completely illogical.

Whereas Rachel was more real in the first book, she comes across as a plant here. The plot is set, and someone needs to follow it, even if it doesn’t entirely make sense why one lone podcaster would risk so much for a story – especially one with all the elements of a non-story. The connection between Maddison and Bailey is tenuous, at best. Even worse, we have the set-up for Bailey’s continued imprisonment – a police conspiracy that Martinez explains with zero compunction: they are digging up every archaic law and left-field reason to keep this man in prison because they suspect he is a killer but have no real proof. Indeed, the entire case is built around the fact that he was caught after having broken into a woman’s apartment, rifling through her underwear drawer. While agreeably shady, making the leap from pervert thief to serial killer leaves readers justifiably baffled. Martienz and Rachel, however, accept Bailey’s guilt and work around him, thinking that he and his killer friends must have hatched some plot to grab the Instagram star. Bailey doesn’t help himself by issuing a weird threat.

When Martinez gets hit by a sudden wave of conscience and tries to send Rachel back home for her own protection, her character further morphs. She stubbornly decides to take on the case, going undercover at BuzzCon, a fancy convention for mega-influencers. Rachel doesn’t want to be known as the famous podcaster, though, so she quickly revives her defunct running profile. None of the other influencers find it weird that a) she has no followers or real social media presence, b) she doesn’t get how influencing works, and c) she never attends any of the influencer events, opting instead for late night beach runs and actually eating instead of photographing food.

Meanwhile, we have a very stinky uber driver wondering around and a growing love story between the exhausted, grief-stricken FBI agent and a querulous Rachel. It’s a recipe for weirdness, interspersed with the usual multi-media moments where we “hear” bits of the podcast-to-be where Rachel foreshadows her own investigation and Maddison’s ultimate story, plus some totally unrelated deaths that lead us down the wrong paths and make us think the killings are more complex and multilayered than they really are.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

So, why the fairly generous rating for Dark Corners, when the story is obviously imperfect, with a faulty plot? This is a thriller – a beach read or a dark and stormy night sleepy-time indulgence. I wasn’t expecting greatness, merely entertainment, and while there were many, many absurd, take-it-for-granted maneuvers and “what just happened” moments, I was ultimately entertained. As with Night Swim, the idea is better than the execution, but the idea itself kept me captivated.

I liked the buzzy focus of the social media “pod” world, loved the interspersed podcast moments (and Rachel’s voice in those moments), and liked all the assorted deaths and disasters, even though the way they worked out was less than desirable. Unlike Night Swim, Rachel focuses on one story here, which worked a lot better too.

Still, it’s just cheap entertainment. If you’re not in the mood for mid-grade mind candy, this probably isn’t your thriller. I was feeling forgiving and salaciously scandalous at the time of reading, so this hit the right chords with me. Will I come back for more Rachel Krall? Honestly, probably not. The ideas are great, but the quality just isn’t quite there and the ending on this one was a complete throw-away. Still, I had fun, had some good entertainment, and walked through the shadow worldly of influencers and serial killers. Enjoyable, but not filling.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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