Gillian Flynn's wildly successful novel, "Gone Girl" is the story of marriage, of betrayal (as if there are any other kinds of stories of marriage) and of the "one-upmanship" that often serves as the only consistent theme of most marriages.

However, it also is a compelling story of the changing economic times that are rendering most "non-technical" jobs of any profession almost completely useless. People who write about art but not about the technology of art or people who want to write commentary on modern times but not necessarily with some technical fulcrum will soon find themselves not only unemployed but unemployable. A certain kind of vocation has just disappeared into the digital bits of the internet. And people who practiced that have really no where to go. And then when you lose your job in the mid-thirties and have nowhere else to go what do you do but either give up on life or pick up a fight with the most convenient target: your spouse. Helps keep things interesting.

Gillian Flynn's book features two despicable characters who pit against each other in an entertaining tale of suspense and intrigue. The story is brilliantly written and there is a lot to like until about half-way through. It descends into your everyday American psychopathy that so rules TV. Then it sorts of tries to figure out what to do with itself being too clever for its own good. And Flynn seems to lose interest or probably aims for literary credibility by providing a half-baked, inconclusive and ultimately lazy end.

Gone Girl is still worth reading, not so much for the suspense or the thrill of it but for the clever writing.