Things We Do in the Dark

As a nested narrative full of twists and unexpected revelations, Jennifer Hillier’s Things We Do in the Dark (2022) includes many traditional elements of a classic murder mystery—multiple gruesome murders, a cast of shady suspects, conflicting testimony, switched identities, a failed blackmail scheme, a dogged investigative reporter, unrequited passion, red herrings, and, supremely, a murder victim with a net worth of more than $80 million. However, the novel resists simply being escapist entertainment, as Hillier suggested in copious interviews surrounding the novel’s publication. In the story of Paris Peralta’s harrowing return to her long-buried past, the novel explores timely, difficult themes including the traumatic impact of abuse and the dark power of privilege and celebrity. Spurred by pre-publication buzz on social media and Hillier’s established reputation in six previous thrillers for intricate storytelling and psychologically complex characters, Things We Do in the Dark was an immediate Amazon and New York Times best-seller.

This study guide refers to the 2022 Minotaur paperback edition.

Content Warning: This novel contains descriptions of child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Sixty-something actor-comedian Jimmy Peralta is considered washed up. Now, however, he is ready to launch a comeback—thanks to streaming specials. When Jimmy is found dead in the bathtub of his palatial estate outside Seattle, the police immediately arrest Jimmy’s latest wife, the Filipina American yoga instructor Paris Peralta, who is half his age. Police had found Paris standing over the body holding Jimmy’s favorite straight razor, which was covered in blood. Paris claims that she had just returned from a yoga convention in Vancouver and found her husband already dead. Her story is difficult to verify, as Paris also claims that she forgot her phone. Paris reaches out to Elsie Dixon, a lawyer and family friend. Elsie believes that Jimmy, under pressure from his comeback, had returned to a cocaine habit and that the death, a slash to the femoral artery, was from suicide. Nevertheless, suspicion grows about Paris—particularly in the tabloids—after news breaks that Jimmy had invalidated their boilerplate prenup shortly before his death. Whereas the previous agreement left Paris $1 million, his revised will means that Paris now stands to inherit half of Jimmy’s estate: close to $46 million.

Among Jimmy’s fan mail, Paris finds a letter to her from Ruby Reyes, a convicted murderer about to be released from a Toronto prison after serving nearly 20 years for killing her lover, a prominent banker named Charles Baxter. The trial had been a media sensation with the imperturbable and sexy Ruby Reyes dubbed the “Ice Queen.” The letter threatens to make public Paris’s “secret” unless she pays Ruby $1 million.

In Toronto, Drew Malcolm, an investigative reporter who runs a successful podcast called Things We Do in the Dark that specializes in exploring controversial murder trials, is stunned that Ruby Reyes is to be paroled. He covered the trial and remembers the horrific nature of the killing and the whispered accusations that the Ice Queen, who entertained a string of lovers, had abused her only daughter, Joey. Drew had been a friend of Joey’s, who, after her mother’s arrest, had gone to live with her uncle and aunt in Maple Sound before returning to Toronto and working in a seedy nightclub. During that time, she rented a room in an apartment that Drew shared with his fiancée. Joey died in a house fire on New Year’s Eve. The fire, ruled an accident, had been horrific, and Drew identified Joey’s charred corpse only through a butterfly tattoo on her thigh and a necklace. Twenty years later, Drew still thinks of Joey with tenderness.

Determined now to investigate questions still remaining about Joey’s death, Drew interviews people from the nightclub. They tell him that Joey was close friends with Betty Savage, a stage name for Mae Ocampo, a petty criminal and part-time sex worker whose boyfriend was Vinh Tranh, the notorious leader of a neighborhood Vietnamese gang that trafficked in cocaine. When Drew looks at an old photo of Betty Savage, he notes how much she resembled Joey herself. Betty herself had disappeared around the time of the house fire that killed Joey; police suspected something to do with a drug deal gone bad.

Drew fears that he is at a dead end when, while he is visiting his mother in a care facility, he happens to see in People magazine a wedding photo of Jimmy and Paris Peralta. Paris Peralta, he realizes, is none other than the deceased Joey Reyes. Drew tracks down police files and discovers that Betty Savage also had a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. Somehow, Joey Reyes switched identities with Betty Savage. Paris Peralta is Joey Reyes, daughter of the Ice Queen herself.

Meanwhile back in Seattle, Paris, released on bond, ponders the implications of Ruby’s blackmail threat, which she has now increased to $10 million. Paris/Joey thinks back to the fire on New Year’s Eve. At Drew’s bachelor party at the strip club, Joey had danced for Drew’s friends—Joey criticized Drew for marrying a woman whom he did not love out of a sense of duty (the woman was pregnant); Drew, for his part, criticized Joey for working at a strip club. They exchanged harsh words. When she returned to her apartment that she shared with Betty, she found the place ransacked—most likely Betty’s boyfriend looking for cocaine or money. Then she found Betty dying with her throat and stomach slit open. Panicking, Joey placed her own necklace on Betty and set the fire, determined to start a new life. She knew where Betty hid the drugs and money that she was stealing from Vinh. Joey took the money and the drugs, purchased identity documents on the black market, and became Paris Aquino.

When surveillance cameras at the Canadian/American border confirm that Paris could not have killed her husband, Paris is released. Meanwhile Drew flies to Seattle determined to reunite with the woman he knew as Joey Reyes. The two solve the murder. Paris/Joey figures out from her home’s surveillance camera footage that it had to have been Jimmy’s own lawyer, Elsie Dixon, who attacked him. Elsie confesses, claiming that she loved Jimmy since high school and could not understand why Jimmy never returned her feelings.

Paris and Drew fly to Toronto. Paris still needs to contend with her mother, who blames Paris for refusing to testify in court that Charles Baxter had sexually abused her, the motive for Ruby’s attack. Joey herself had finished off the killing, using an ice skate to nearly decapitate Baxter. Ruby has always believed that she served what should have been Joey’s prison sentence. Paris/Joey offers her $1 million as a compromise, which Ruby angrily refuses. She attacks her daughter and shoves her into a farm pond, knowing that her daughter cannot swim. Drew rescues her. He captures the attack on video on his phone. That attack will be evidence enough to show Ruby breaking the conditions of her parole—Ruby will return to prison to finish her life sentence.

Now, after 20 years, Paris and Drew prepare to renew their love.