A Flicker in the Dark: Full Book Summary

At a Glance

Genre: Psychological thriller, domestic noir with Southern Gothic atmosphere
Setting: Baton Rouge and Breaux Bridge, Louisiana; present day with echoes of events 20 years earlier
Perspective: First-person narration from an unreliable protagonist

Opening Hook

Monsters don’t always lurk in shadows—they smile across the dinner table. In the steamy Louisiana summer, a woman who rebuilt her life after a string of teenage murders finds the past returning with cruel precision. As girls begin to vanish again, she chases answers through fogged memory and buried guilt, unsure whether the danger is a copycat killer, someone she loves, or herself. Each revelation peels back another layer of family secrets, until the story’s final flicker exposes who’s been hiding in plain sight all along.

Plot Overview

Act I: The Past Resurfaces

Twenty years after her father, Richard Davis, was convicted of murdering six girls in their small hometown, Baton Rouge psychologist Chloe Davis clings to the life she’s built: a steady practice, a wedding on the horizon to her attentive fiancé Daniel Briggs, and strict routines to keep panic at bay. Then a local teenager, Aubrey Gravino, goes missing in a way that mirrors the old murders. Soon after, another girl—Lacey Deckler, one of Chloe’s own patients—disappears, and the pattern feels undeniable. A reporter calling himself Aaron Jansen / Tyler Price arrives to cover the anniversary of the original crimes, stirring up public obsession and Chloe’s private terrors. As she numbs herself with pills, her grip on reality wavers—just as the hunt for a killer closes in around her.

Act II: A Web of Suspicion

Old wounds split open, and Chloe’s mistrust blooms. She zeroes in on Bert Rhodes, a volatile father linked to one of the original victims, Lena Rhodes. But the suspicion soon turns inward. Daniel’s travel stories don’t add up. Chloe’s brother, Cooper Davis, has always disliked Daniel, and now Chloe finds Aubrey’s necklace hidden in her own closet. She learns Daniel’s sister, Sophie, vanished two decades ago—another chilling echo of Breaux Bridge. Convinced Daniel is obsessed with her family’s infamy and may be recreating its horrors, Chloe races to prove the danger is inside her home.

Act III: The Climax in Breaux Bridge

When Riley—the daughter of Chloe’s close friend—disappears, panic turns to certainty: Daniel must be the culprit. Following a desperate hunch, Chloe returns to her abandoned childhood home in Breaux Bridge and discovers Riley alive but drugged. The figure who confronts her, however, isn’t Daniel—it’s “Aaron Jansen,” who reveals his true name: Tyler Price, a disturbed acquaintance from her past who fetishized the Davis murders. He boasts of his role as the copycat, the perfect ghoul for a cursed family. In a violent struggle, Chloe shoots and kills Tyler, narrowly saving both Riley and herself.

Act IV: The Final Truth

The aftermath upends every assumption. Cleared by the police, Daniel admits he staged Sophie’s disappearance years ago to help her escape their abusive father. He has been visiting Richard in prison, convinced the original Breaux Bridge killer wasn’t Chloe’s father—but Cooper. Chloe confronts her brother. Cooper confesses: he murdered the girls twenty years earlier, and Richard took the fall to protect him. Fearing Daniel was getting too close to the truth, Cooper manipulated Tyler into committing the new murders to frame Daniel and keep suspicion away. In a final act of courage, Chloe drugs Cooper’s wine while detectives listen in, leading to his arrest. As the dust settles, Chloe begins to make peace with her past, awaits her father’s release, and tentatively rebuilds her life with Daniel—no longer living under a lie.

Central Characters

For a full cast breakdown, see the Character Overview.

Chloe Davis

A trauma-scarred psychologist whose childhood was defined by her father’s conviction.
Unreliable yet compelling, her medicated, memory-fractured perspective turns detection into self-interrogation.
Arc: From fearful self-doubt to active moral clarity, she confronts the past, unmasks the real killer, and reclaims her agency.

Cooper Davis

Chloe’s older brother, outwardly protective, inwardly predatory.
A calculating sociopath who committed the original murders and orchestrated the copycat killings by manipulating Tyler.
Arc: The family’s secret center of rot; his confession exposes how love twisted into lethal loyalty.

Richard Davis

The father imprisoned for two decades as a presumed serial killer.
His silence and sacrifice mask a terrible choice: covering for his son.
Arc: From monstrous figure to tragic protector, he embodies the cost of family loyalty gone wrong.

Daniel Briggs

Chloe’s fiancé, framed by circumstance and his own deceptions.
His lies stem from a separate, buried trauma and a drive to protect—both his sister and Chloe.
Arc: A red herring who becomes an unexpected ally, helping pry open the truth about Cooper.

Aaron Jansen / Tyler Price

Poses as a reporter but is a hometown lurker obsessed with the Davis case.
Easily steered by Cooper, he seeks notoriety and proximity to horror.
Arc: The mask of the copycat; dangerous, but ultimately a pawn in a larger, older evil.

Major Themes

For more on the book’s ideas and motifs, see the Theme Overview.

The Lingering Trauma of the Past: Chloe’s entire adult life—career, coping mechanisms, intimacy—unfolds in the shadow of crimes she did not commit but cannot escape. The novel shows how unresolved trauma fractures memory and judgment, forcing survivors to rebuild identity from shards.
Deception and Appearance vs. Reality: Trusted roles—father, brother, fiancé, reporter—prove to be costumes. The story trains readers to question surfaces, revealing how charm, normalcy, and even heroism can camouflage predation.
Family Secrets and Dysfunctional Loyalty: The Davis family’s defining act is a cover-up. Richard’s decision to take the blame for Cooper curdles into a generational poison, showing how loyalty without accountability metastasizes into lifelong harm.
Memory, Paranoia, and Unreliable Narration: Chloe’s medicated haze, panic spirals, and fractured recollections create a narrative fog that both misleads and protects. The novel makes a case for memory’s malleability—and how fear edits the past as surely as trauma does.
The Nature of Evil and Monstrosity: Evil here is intimate, ordinary, neighborly. By locating monstrosity in family rooms and newsrooms rather than in dark alleys, the book argues that the scariest predators are those we’ve already invited inside.

Literary Significance

Published in 2022 amid the surge of psychological thrillers and true-crime fascination, A Flicker in the Dark embraces domestic noir’s hallmarks—female lead, gaslit reality, claustrophobic relationships—while sharpening them with a sultry Southern Gothic setting. The novel sits in conversation with the genre lineage of unreliable narrators, yet distinguishes itself through layered misdirection, a sustained atmosphere of dread, and a keen focus on intergenerational damage. Rather than a simple whodunit, it becomes a study of how love, shame, and secrecy collaborate to create a killer—and how truth, once lit, forces everyone to see what’s been there all along.

Critical Reception

A New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick, the novel drew praise for its breathless pacing, humid atmosphere, and deft misdirection. Critics lauded the flawed yet magnetic narrator and the way the setting amplifies dread. While some noted the use of familiar thriller tropes, most agreed that Stacy Willingham’s execution—especially the final reveals—delivered a tense, satisfying entry that established her as a standout new voice in the genre.

Full Book Summary