Some Choose Darkness Summary, Characters and Themes
Some Choose Darkness by Charlie Donlea is a psychological thriller that expertly bridges the gap between the past and the present through the lens of forensic reconstruction. At its heart is Rory Moore, an emotionally guarded forensic expert whose investigation into an old serial killer case inadvertently uncovers secrets buried within her own family.
The novel examines the long-term impact of trauma, the fine line between madness and genius, and the resilience of women forced into silence by those who doubt them. Donlea’s narrative is both intimate and suspenseful, with a complex structure that unfolds in layers of discovery, obsession, and identity.
Summary
The novel opens with a man overwhelmed by anxiety and chest pains, triggered by a letter from the parole board. His terror is tied to secrets he’s kept for decades—lies and files stashed in his safe that could implicate him if the past comes to light.
This ominous tension sets the stage for a dual narrative centered on Rory Moore, a forensic reconstructionist with an analytical mind and a ritualized lifestyle, and Angela Mitchell, a brilliant but troubled woman from the 1970s who once uncovered the patterns of a serial killer.
Rory is lured back into investigative work through the symbolic act of restoring a porcelain doll for Walter Byrd, the grieving father of a murder victim named Camille. Her personal life is thrown into turmoil with the sudden death of her father, Frank Moore, a lawyer who leaves behind a trail of incomplete cases.
One of those is the case of Thomas Mitchell—convicted decades earlier for a single murder but suspected of more. As Rory reluctantly steps into her father’s legal shoes, she becomes enmeshed in the investigation he left behind.
Simultaneously, the story shifts to 1979, where Angela Mitchell suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and is haunted by the disappearances of young women. Her encounters with a suspicious man, Leonard Williams, and her later suspicions of her own husband, Thomas Mitchell, send her into a deep psychological spiral.
Despite her fragile state, Angela’s deductive prowess allows her to link a string of murders attributed to “The Thief,” a serial killer who leaves little evidence behind. Her meticulous research, including graphs and timelines, goes largely ignored due to her mental health history.
Angela’s fears heighten when she discovers disturbing evidence in Leonard’s warehouse—objects suggesting the site was used for torture or murder. She later suspects her own husband may be the killer, especially after finding incriminating objects tied to the missing women.
Her investigations create a rift with her friend Catherine, who dismisses her theories. But Angela’s obsession with the truth—and her fear of being disbelieved—push her into increasingly dangerous territory.
Her actions culminate in a confrontation with Thomas, and then a plan to vanish to protect herself and her unborn child.
In the present day, Rory’s growing curiosity about Angela’s past intersects with the case of Thomas Mitchell, whose parole is approved after decades in prison. Rory is assigned to oversee his relocation to a secluded cabin.
Uneasy from the start, she uncovers links between Mitchell and the murders her father had secretly investigated. Rory learns from Catherine that Angela may have faked her death to escape.
Further clues from her father’s secret files—stored in a safety deposit box—indicate that Frank Moore believed Angela was alive and had helped hide her with the aid of a nurse named Margaret Schreiber.
As Rory connects these threads, she realizes Greta, the woman she knew as her great-aunt, was in fact Margaret—Angela’s protector and the midwife who delivered Rory after Angela died in childbirth. Rory’s entire identity begins to unravel as she uncovers the truth: she is the daughter of Angela and Thomas Mitchell.
Greta had kept her hidden from Thomas’s legacy of violence by arranging her adoption through Frank and Marla Moore.
Spurred by these revelations, Rory visits Thomas Mitchell’s remote cabin, where she discovers horrifying evidence: a plat survey marking burial sites and a grim apparatus used for his killings. She finds Catherine, Angela’s old friend, hanging in the death machine, confirming Thomas’s return to his old, sadistic rituals.
In a harrowing moment of confrontation, Rory hides and then disrupts his attempt at “The Rush,” the euphoric high he achieves from orchestrating death, by kicking the stool away, causing his own death by hanging.
Rory flees the cabin, calls in the crime anonymously, and works with her partner Lane to erase any traces of her involvement. Morally shaken but resolute, she withholds the truth from the authorities.
Instead of exposing every detail, she chooses to protect Angela’s legacy and the people who shielded her from harm. She reconciles with her identity by visiting Greta’s farm, laying flowers where Angela was buried, and reclaiming the personal history long kept from her.
The novel ends as Rory recommits herself to the forensic case she had previously set aside—that of Camille Byrd. Camille’s death, which had opened the door to Rory’s reentry into criminal investigation, becomes the next chapter in her work.
With a renewed sense of purpose and self-awareness, Rory vows to honor the lives lost by continuing her pursuit of truth, now grounded by the knowledge of her own painful but empowering origins. Some Choose Darkness closes with the idea that some women choose silence, some choose disappearance—but some, like Rory, choose to confront the darkness head-on.
Characters
Rory Moore
Rory Moore, the novel’s central figure, is a forensic reconstructionist whose brilliance is matched only by her emotional detachment and obsessive tendencies. She exists within a carefully curated world of routine and ritual, using structured habits—such as wearing heavy coats and layering contact lenses with glasses—as armor against psychological vulnerability.
Though she usually works with broken dolls, her transition into reconstructing crimes is both literal and symbolic, as she pieces together fractured narratives and identities. Rory’s journey begins when she is emotionally manipulated into investigating Camille Byrd’s murder, a case that draws her into the depths of her past.
Her analytical mind thrives on immersion into victims’ lives, revealing her need for control in chaotic circumstances. The death of her adoptive father and her inheritance of his law firm forces her to confront not only her distaste for law but also the unresolved emotional tensions tied to him.
As Rory delves into Angela Mitchell’s story, the forensic becomes personal—unraveling the threads of her identity, lineage, and trauma. The revelation that she is Angela’s daughter upends her constructed reality, yet she persists, driven by the need to know and reclaim her truth.
Her final confrontation with Thomas Mitchell and her silent orchestration of justice underscores her moral complexity. Ultimately, Rory emerges as a survivor—a woman shaped by silence and secrecy, who learns to confront the buried horrors of the past to reclaim a sense of purpose and self.
Angela Mitchell
Angela Mitchell is the haunted genius whose life, long obscured by mental illness and systemic dismissal, becomes the cornerstone of the mystery in Some Choose Darkness. Angela suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and possibly autism, conditions that alienate her from most people but also sharpen her perception and intellect.
Her world is one of intense anxiety, ritual, and acute observational prowess. In 1979, her meticulous tracking of abductions by The Thief is dismissed by authorities and even her closest friend, Catherine, contributing to a lifelong sense of invalidation.
Her marriage to Thomas Mitchell becomes a personal nightmare, and when she uncovers concrete signs of his involvement in the disappearances, her instincts are confirmed. Angela’s mental unraveling is deeply tied to her isolation and the terror of living with a monster, yet her courage persists as she uncovers disturbing evidence and prepares for escape.
Her decision to fake her own death with Greta’s help is a desperate, brave act of self-preservation and maternal protection. Angela’s death during childbirth becomes a tragic coda to her short but impactful life.
Her legacy lives on in Rory, not just genetically but intellectually and emotionally, as Rory inherits Angela’s gift for pattern recognition and resilience. Angela, misunderstood in her lifetime, becomes posthumously validated as the key to exposing a serial killer and rescuing a lost daughter from a web of lies.
Thomas Mitchell
Thomas Mitchell is the embodiment of insidious evil cloaked in normalcy. Initially introduced as Angela’s husband and later unmasked as the serial killer known as The Thief, Thomas is a chilling study in duality.
Outwardly respectable, he moves through society with deceptive ease, but his inner world is dominated by psychopathic control and a hunger for “The Rush”—the euphoric satisfaction he derives from witnessing death. His methods are methodical and sadistic, involving symbolic items like nooses, pulley systems, and precise staging.
When Angela begins to suspect his true nature, his paranoia grows, exposing the fragility beneath his manipulative confidence. Even decades later, after his release from prison, Thomas continues his lethal rituals, returning to his secluded cabin with the intention of rekindling his murderous past.
His death, orchestrated by Rory, mirrors the same theatricality he imposed on his victims, creating a poetic sense of justice. Thomas’s character highlights how evil can thrive in silence and dismissal, and how deeply its roots can penetrate into familial and societal structures.
He is not just a villain but a distorted anchor point in the lives of Angela and Rory, representing both literal and psychological imprisonment.
Frank Moore
Frank Moore, Rory’s adoptive father, is a man of discipline, legal precision, and buried secrets. As a lawyer, he defended Thomas Mitchell, unaware at the time of the full breadth of his client’s crimes.
Over time, however, Frank’s conscience and suspicions drive him to a quiet, personal investigation into the truth. His discovery that Angela Mitchell might still be alive leads him to covertly search for her while simultaneously raising Rory as his own.
This duality—father and secret keeper—defines Frank’s complexity. While he provides Rory with a structured upbringing and nurtures her investigative talents, he also shields her from a devastating truth about her origins.
His death sets the plot in motion, with his case files and safety deposit box containing the breadcrumbs that lead Rory to Angela and ultimately to herself. Frank’s quiet determination to protect Rory, even from the truth, is both noble and flawed.
His choices frame the novel’s meditation on what it means to choose darkness—not out of malevolence, but out of perceived necessity and love.
Catherine Blackwell
Catherine Blackwell serves as both a bridge and a cautionary figure in Rory’s and Angela’s stories. Once Angela’s closest confidante, Catherine fails to fully support her friend during a critical moment of distress.
Her skepticism regarding Angela’s suspicions about Thomas Mitchell, though understandable in its context, becomes a lifelong source of guilt. Her transformation in 2019, when she reenters the narrative to recount Angela’s brilliance and pain, is marked by remorse and a desperate desire for redemption.
Her willingness to speak with Rory and provide key insights into Angela’s final days is crucial to unearthing the truth. However, Catherine’s ultimate fate—becoming one of Thomas Mitchell’s final victims—closes her arc with haunting symmetry.
Just as she once failed to save Angela, she too is consumed by the same darkness. Catherine’s character is a reflection on the consequences of disbelief and the price of silence, showing that inaction can have as devastating an impact as direct harm.
Forsicks (The Thief)
Forsicks, initially known only by his alias “The Thief,” is a shadowy and psychologically disturbing presence throughout the novel. A serial killer with a calculated detachment, Forsicks is defined by his manipulations and the fear he inspires.
He spends years in prison maintaining a veneer of control, waiting for the moment he might reclaim his secret and complete the fantasy he has built around his crimes. Though the parole board grants him release, the unraveling of his carefully constructed world begins when he loses contact with his lawyer and realizes the narrative is slipping from his grasp.
The psychological torment he inflicts on his victims, and the cold methodical nature of his crimes, show a man devoid of empathy but full of ego. Forsicks’s haunting influence ripples across the decades, shaping investigations and lives alike.
While ultimately revealed to be secondary to Thomas Mitchell in terms of body count and direct culpability, Forsicks represents the face of evil that society recognizes—making him a decoy for the more insidious threat that hides in plain sight.
Greta (Margaret Schreiber)
Greta, known to Rory as her great-aunt, is a quiet guardian of truth whose actions alter the trajectory of multiple lives. As a nurse at the psychiatric hospital where Angela was briefly confined, Greta becomes the only person willing to believe her.
Risking her career and safety, she orchestrates Angela’s escape, helps her fake her death, and raises Rory as part of the Moore family’s circle. Greta’s character is one of silent strength and enduring loyalty.
Her death, possibly at the hands of Thomas Mitchell, adds a layer of tragedy to her heroism. She is the linchpin in Angela’s brief freedom and Rory’s secure upbringing.
Greta’s legacy is one of compassion and moral bravery—a quiet but powerful presence whose decisions create the foundation upon which truth is finally revealed.
Themes
Obsession with Truth and the Cost of Knowing
In Some Choose Darkness, the search for truth is not an abstract concept but a consuming drive that shapes the characters’ lives and unravels their mental and emotional states. Both Rory Moore and Angela Mitchell are drawn toward uncovering concealed truths—Rory through forensic reconstruction and Angela through her compulsive investigation into a series of disappearances.
Their commitment to understanding what really happened becomes a double-edged sword: it offers clarity and vindication but also drags them through emotional devastation. Rory’s method of learning about her subjects requires immersion, bordering on self-destruction, and Angela’s obsession manifests through symptoms of mental illness, social alienation, and a deep fear of her own reality.
The story shows how truth isn’t a clean revelation; it comes at a high psychological price. This compulsion to understand isn’t always rooted in justice, either—it’s tangled with identity, guilt, and unresolved grief.
For Rory, discovering the true history of her birth and biological parents rewrites her sense of self, forcing her to reconcile with the fact that her life is the product of trauma, deception, and desperate attempts at survival. Angela, similarly, sacrifices her stability and safety in her relentless pursuit of knowledge, risking everything to expose her husband.
The novel makes it clear that truth is not neutral—it has gravity, and the act of uncovering it has lasting consequences. Those who seek it must be prepared to carry its weight, as both Angela and Rory learn through their parallel and intersecting journeys.
Psychological Isolation and Misunderstanding
The characters in Some Choose Darkness are isolated not only by circumstance but by the way their minds work. Angela’s obsessive-compulsive disorder and possible autism make her an outsider, someone whose insights are often dismissed due to her perceived instability.
Despite her razor-sharp intellect and precise logic, she’s labeled irrational by those closest to her, including her friend Catherine and even her husband. The novel paints a painful portrait of what it means to be mentally different in a society that prioritizes composure over insight.
Angela’s descent into paranoia and fear is exacerbated by the lack of belief from others—an experience that mirrors what many neurodivergent individuals face when their realities don’t conform to societal norms. Rory, though more functional on the surface, also lives in emotional exile.
Her need for order, her rituals, her avoidance of social bonds—all function as mechanisms of control in a world that feels chaotic and unsafe. This internal world is rarely understood by those around her, contributing to her sense of aloneness even as she builds professional relationships.
The novel doesn’t pity these women, however—it empowers them. Their isolation becomes a crucible that sharpens their capabilities, allowing them to see what others miss.
Yet, this empowerment is laced with melancholy: the world only begins to believe them when their predictions come true in horrifying ways. The book critiques how society fails to protect and listen to those who think differently, and how such failures lead to tragic consequences for both the misunderstood and the dismissive.
The Inheritance of Violence and Secrecy
Violence in Some Choose Darkness is not just a crime to be solved—it is a legacy, passed down in silence and secrets. Rory inherits more than her father’s law practice; she inherits the consequences of the choices he made in the shadows, the unspoken knowledge of a client who was never what he claimed to be, and the haunted remnants of a woman he tried to save but couldn’t.
Her life is shaped by a decision made decades before she understood its context, a secret held by people who loved her enough to lie. Angela’s child, whom Rory eventually discovers to be herself, is the literal and metaphorical product of both violence and the determination to escape it.
Angela’s death in childbirth, Greta’s concealment of her origins, and Frank Moore’s adoption of her all form a web of protective lies intended to bury a violent past. The novel argues that violence doesn’t simply end with a death or a conviction—it persists in the lives of those left behind, shaping their fears, decisions, and identities.
Rory’s confrontation with Thomas Mitchell is not merely about justice but about reclaiming agency over a narrative that has governed her existence without her consent. The revelation of her origins forces her to reevaluate every assumption about her past, making it clear that secrets meant to shield can also imprison.
The story warns that hiding violence may delay its effects, but it does not erase them—only confronting the truth has the potential to end the cycle.
Identity, Memory, and Reinvention
Throughout Some Choose Darkness, identity is not fixed—it is fractured, constructed, and at times, fabricated as a means of survival. Angela reinvents herself through disappearance, aided by Greta’s intervention and the legal and physical transformation that follows.
She steps out of her known life not to escape punishment but to preserve what remains of herself and her unborn child. Her new identity is fragile, haunted by memories of what she left behind, yet it allows for a kind of freedom otherwise denied to her.
Rory’s identity, too, undergoes seismic shifts. Initially defined by her peculiarities, her forensic talents, and her adoptive family, she comes to realize that her very existence is the result of a carefully maintained fiction.
As she uncovers her lineage, Rory is forced to examine what defines her—blood, memory, or experience. These discoveries disrupt her self-concept but also offer the possibility of choosing a more authentic self.
The novel treats identity as a construct continually challenged by memory and revelation. Memory itself is unreliable—subject to suppression, misinterpretation, and trauma—but it is also the only path to truth.
Rory’s work as a reconstructionist is symbolic of this: she pieces together fragments not just to find answers for others, but eventually for herself. By the end, her sense of identity has expanded to include both the pain of her origins and the strength of her chosen life.
In this world, to survive is to adapt, and to adapt is to rewrite the self through hard-won understanding.
Justice and Moral Ambiguity
The concept of justice in Some Choose Darkness is messy, personal, and often morally ambiguous. Legal justice proves ineffective time and again.
Thomas Mitchell is convicted but only for one of many crimes, and his release looms not because of innocence but because of procedural decay and legal maneuvering. Rory’s father, a defense lawyer, represents a man he grows to suspect is guilty of unimaginable atrocities.
This blurring of legal duty and personal morality mirrors Rory’s own journey, particularly in the novel’s climactic confrontation at the cabin. There, she becomes both witness and executioner, allowing Thomas Mitchell to die by his own death ritual and ensuring the authorities do not discover the full truth.
Her decision is not sanctioned by law, nor is it easily categorized as right or wrong. It is an act of protection, of finality, of reclaiming control.
Rory’s silence in the aftermath reinforces the novel’s exploration of the cost of justice—not only the toll it takes on the one seeking it but also the compromises and secrets it requires. Angela, too, pursues justice not through courts but through meticulous documentation, intuition, and a will to survive.
Her version of justice is rooted in exposure and escape. The book challenges readers to consider where the line is drawn between justice and vengeance, between protecting the innocent and hiding the guilty, and whether truth alone is enough to restore balance.
In this morally gray world, justice is a private act, shaped as much by emotion as by principle.