‘Darkly’ review: Internship uncovers mystery in Marisha Pessl novel

Do you want to play a game?
In “Darkly,” (Delacorte, 416 pp. ★★★ out of four) the newest novel by Marisha Pessl, 17-year-old Arcadia “Dia” Gannon has been chosen by the Louisiana Veda Foundation along with six other teens from around the world for a mysterious summer internship.
Dia has long been obsessed with late game designer Louisiana Veda and Veda’s board game company, Darkly. After Veda’s sudden death, the company had ceased production, with fans and collectors willing to pay exorbitant amounts for one of the original 28 games that were created. This surprising, exclusive opportunity would not only allow Dia to learn more about the founder, but also free her from running the family shop, Prologue Antiques, for her largely absent mother.
As Dia and her fellow interns arrive at the crumbling board game empire’s factory on a private island, they are tasked with a challenge not unlike one of Veda’s game, and they must untangle clues from layers of lies and secrets in the dangerous race to solve it.
Some of the book’s twists seem obvious, but are perhaps purposefully done to distract from other deceptions.
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Louisiana Veda created layers of deception in her games, Dia says in the book, and the same could be said about Pessl. Copies of letters, old photographs and maps are sprinkled among the book’s pages, engaging visual cues that are possibly hiding clues, so readers can solve the mystery along with Dia and the rest of the Veda Seven interns.
The more Dia — and the reader — navigate the novel’s twists and turns around the literary game board, the more questions arise with each puzzle’s answer: what is really going on with this internship? Are the other interns being honest? What was Louisiana hiding at the Darkly factory?
“Darkly,” Pessl’s first novel since 2018’s young adult suspense thriller “Neverworld Wake,” on the surface seems to draw bits of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” mixed with Agatha Christie mysteries, but it’s also distinctly Pessl, with an engaging plot of puzzles that reveal hidden truths about identity and legacy.
Old things bookmark our lives, Pessl writes, and that may be the token to the novel’s game. At its heart, “Darkly” is an examination of the objects and the moments that make us, that fuel our pursuits or haunt our visions — and sometimes what we choose to do with the cards we’re given.