Noah's Reviews > A Light in the Darkness

Oh, I like my boys playing hard to get / And I like my men all incompetent / And I swear they choose me, I'm not choosing them / Amen… hey, men! (Manchild – Sabrina Carpenter).

Woah man, what an amazing book, and I’m really not exaggerating when I tell you that I’ve never read a mystery quite like it. Nonetheless, if I had to play the “comparisons game,” then I’d say A Light in the Darkness fits more into the "non-mystery-mystery" category like The Clearwater Mysteries series by Jackson Marsh rather than something more traditional like those Miss Alice books. Instead of strictly focusing on the murder-y bits, this book fell more in line with the likes of the movie Young Adult, Haley's romance plot-line from Stardew Valley, and shared the "small-town-with-a-dark-secret" vibes from Life is Strange: True Colors. Sorry, whenever I’m excited about something, I basically just start referencing a bunch of things I also liked as if I were a non-stop, never-ending Ryan Reynolds joke. It's annoying, but I can’t help it! So yeah, this book was not only an exercise of the mind due to its clever mystery and surprising emotional complexities, but also an incredibly heart-wrenching tale detailing the slow progress of both learning self-worth and the courage to fight back against an ever encroaching wave of bigotry threatening to ruin your community. Now, I’ll admit I was pretty worried going into A Light in the Darkness because I had already been warned that the main character, Max's unlikable protagonist status made the book a bit of a slow burn… so I don’t know what it says about me that I absolutely adored him from the start. It's how I've always been; Toy Story 1’s version of Woody was always the one I enjoyed watching the most and Better Call Saul is my favorite show of all time despite it being chalk full of awful people, so I guess I kind of gravitate towards the selfish and jealous types. Oops, there I go again with the listing a bunch of things thing! Look, what I’m really trying to get at here is that characters who play fast and loose with their sense of morality always skyrocket right into my “favorites list” (it’s always evolving) because they're so fun to watch. So, when I think back to Max… sure, he’s a selfish brat who could grow up a little bit, yet I still found him to be an incredibly funny, smart, and engaging character to follow. And if nothing else, he was just a deep breath of fresh air against the ever growing pantheon of goody-two-shoe, do-gooders that populate the mystery genre. Okay, now let’s talk about the plot, yeah? After his mayor father lands himself in the hospital, thirty-two year-old runaway and con man(child) Maxwell Talbot finds himself forced right back to his estranged family and all the ghosts he left behind in the old small town he grew up in. See, even though he doesn’t know it yet, deep down Max is looking for a change and doesn’t want to bend it like Beckham for shitty dudes anymore and would much rather Benson Boone back-flip into the arms of a good man. I guess it’s good timing that while traveling down the old town road he reunites with his childhood crush and now bartender to the only queer bar for miles, Mike Carter. Need I say more? You know how the song goes, “Ooh, she made us drinks to drink, we drunk 'em, got drunk” and all that.

What then follows is a “best of both worlds” situation because this book has interesting mystery that not only works as a fun brain teaser, but is also closely linked to both Carter and Max, as it informs both of their character arcs to the highest degree. Let's be real, there's no doubt that a long-running mystery series can often start to feel a little distant by the seventh or eighth installment, and when the main character starts to become less emotionally involved in the mystery, then why shouldn't we? This is why I liked the first season of Only Murders in the Building (and only the first), because even though the only reason the characters start investigating a murder is because they're bored and want content for their podcast, the show slowly deconstructs this shallow mindset and forces the characters consider the murder victim as exactly what they are... a murder victim. A Light in the Darkness follows suit by following characters who become personally invested in the mystery even though the murder victim was a person who, by all accounts, doesn't deserve such consideration, thus allowing both Max and Carter to reevaluate the fact that at the end of the day, there really was a person who senselessly lost their life. Even if they hate the guy, his death is still something to take seriously. This book doesn't follow the usual run-of-the-mill mystery sequences where the detective feels weirdly detached from the murder with all loose ends being tied up nice and tidy by the end of the novel. Yeah, there's a realistic overlap and an intriguing set-up for the sequel, but it never read like Marvel movie post-credits slop, and instead felt like a natural conclusion to this novel while also leaving room for more to be explored. If anything, I'd have to say that this book has shades of a noir story, in that the mystery becomes an obsessive journey for our heroes with the small-town setting coming alive and becoming its own overpowering presence in the narrative. So yeah, while I think I made it clear that Max was one of the best mystery protagonist I’ve come across, Carter both compliments him and work wonderfully as his main foil. I thoroughly enjoyed was how he was portrayed as a simple, yet good person despite his constant struggle with his inner darkness. Being a victim of terrible bullying will do that to you, I guess. And even though there were moments where he’d dip his fingers a little too deep into the “therapy speak” pie that reminded me too closely of those terrible Hallmark Christmas movie… or The Last of Us season two, I still found his arc fascinating. Like, we all have dark thoughts that lead to hypothetical imagined violent scenarios, don’t we? I know I do! There’s this one recurring fantasy scenario (that would never happen, obviously) I've had where I’m being interviewed by Jimmy Fallon and I snap in anger after a grand total of two seconds of hearing his fake ass laugh. And after he does that thing where he puts his unwanted hand on my shoulder in a moment of false comradery, instead of letting his gnarled fingers touch me, I twist his arm backwards and give him a swift chop right to his exposed throat, incapacitating him and removing the threat. See, we all have trains of thoughts just like this, no? Hm, please tell me I’m not the only one who has a visceral hatred for Jimmy Fallon and/or Kimmel.

I mean, my daydreams aren't all violent! I have one where I'm giving a Ted Talk on all the subtle little nuances in the song, "I Really Like You" by Carly Rae Jepsen, so you know... we all contain multitudes or whatever. She says she knows it isn't love, so instead she "really, really, really" likes them! See, it's clever! On a serious note, I truly believe that the greatest strength to A Light in the Darkness is the fact that it doesn’t read like a tried-and-true murder mystery (and its biggest weakness being the title), and there were even moments of domesticity to Carter and Max's relationship that not only had me forgetting what kind of book I was reading, but also worked as a much needed reprieve to the otherwise almost overwhelmingly dark tone. When I was younger, I used to be obsessed with defining my interests with labels, and I couldn’t go a day without being all like, “I could never read a book that involves [blank]” about anything I'd pick up! But now as my taste in literature has steadily grown more varied over the years, I've started to realize the simple truth that I'll literally read anything as long as the writing is good. And yeah, I’m aware that saying that sounds like one of those overly pretentious, yet superficially hollow statements that you’d hear some actor say while everybody else responds with a "mm~mm" or a "yes~ss" on one of those “actors round table” things or an inane comment from that monotone tool who hosts the Hot Ones interviews, but in a time where every book gets distilled to their most base essentials and commodified down to a list of tropes; I really have come to appreciate stories that defy being boxed in. I’ve been watching a lot of The White Lotus (like, all three seasons in a very short amount of time and also... Murray Bartlett is insanely hot), and one of my favorite things about the show is that even though every seasons gives us a CSI type opening with a dead body being found and the rest of the story explaining how we got there, the show doesn't actually focus too much on the whole murder side of things. It’s more about how the seemingly tiny and minuscule choices we make in our treatment of others can lead to catastrophic results. Sheesh maybe I should go on “actors on actors,” I mean, I'm already sitting crossed-legged! But really though, as much as I love, love, love a classic mystery, the reason why this book took hold of me was because of its refusal to go the way a normal mystery would, and taking into account the fact that Max's morality ambiguity (what with his constant breaking the law, sneaking into every building like he leveled lock-picking up to a hundred), the character's development working in tandem with the narrative rather than simply moving parallel to it, and the lack of any sort of copaganda, I’m really not exaggerating when I tell you that this book is in a league of its own! Anyway, even though it's possible that I’m like this because I'm coming down from the "just-finished-a-good-book" high, I'm feeling that this feeling will stay with me for a long, long while. A Light in the Darkness is a true mystery, sure, but what makes it stand tall above all the rest is its relentless pursuit of strong character writing that adorns the overall mystery rather than halts it. Let me reiterate, this is a wonderful book. Amazing, even.

“Home. Aw.” Max grinned. “I’m growing on you.”
“Fungus does that.”