Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
If you thought the Day crime in Dark Places and the real-life Clutter massacre in the Capote true-crime novel In Cold Blood were similar, you're not alone. Sitting down with The Guardian, Gillian Flynn says Dark Places is "partly an homage" to that true-crime masterwork. (Source.)
The Kill Club doesn't have a real-life equivalent—at least not one we're brave enough to go searching for—but it does have another literary one. Charlaine Harris depicts a similar concept in her mystery novel Real Murders, about a group of people obsessed with—you guessed it—real murders. If this book had been published after Dark Places, they'd be totally obsessed with the Day murder. (Source.)
Life insurance fraud isn't usually as dramatic—and violent—as the crime that occurs in Dark Places. In non-Gillian Flynn world, life insurance fraud is more likely to involve faked deaths or forgery. (Source.)