The best stories stay with you. Long after you've read that final page, they haunt your thoughts, disturb your sleep, disrupt your concentration. Gone Girl has become one of those books for me.

Quite frankly, this novel falls outside my usual comfort zone: it isn't in the "speculative fiction triad" of SF, fantasy, or horror that typically grabs my readerly attention. I doubt I would have picked it up on my own. My wife happened to have read it, recommended it, so I checked it out of our local (digital) library and gave it a try. I had no idea what to expect. After finishing it, rapt and unable to put it down for the final chapters, it still defies all expectations.

This is at its heart a mystery story, a psychological thriller, but not like any I've read before. Gillian Flynn does a masterful job of alternating the perspectives of Nick and Amy Dunne, an unhappily married couple whose personal marital drama has blown up into a tawdry tale of deception and betrayal that dominates the tabloids. But, as the chapters swing like a pendulum between Nick's and Amy's point of view, you're left wondering: who is really the deceiver and who the victim? The story takes some whiplash-inducing twists and turns along the way as the reader is drawn into a toxic, tangled realm where nothing can be taken at face value and nobody can be trusted.

I don't want to spoil the ending for those who haven't yet indulged in this unique and satisfying tale. Let me just say this: no classic criminal mastermind, no homicidal super-villain, comes close to creeping me out one fraction as much as the stealthy, patient sociopath who stalks the pages of Gone Girl. The most terrifying monsters are the ones we can easily imagine living next door or down the hall, hidden in plain sight.

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