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The Dark Room: Book summary and reviews of The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore

The Dark Room

by Jonathan Moore

The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore X
The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore
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  • Published Jan 2017
    304 pages
    Genre: Thrillers

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Book Summary

A heart-pounding thriller from an "electrifying" (Stephen King) author that shows what happens when our deepest secrets are unburied.

Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide inspector, is in the middle of an exhumation when his phone rings. San Francisco's mayor is being blackmailed and has ordered Cain back to the city; a helicopter is on its way. The casket, and Cain's cold-case investigation, must wait. 

At City Hall, the mayor shows Cain four photographs he's received: the first, an unforgettable blonde; the second, pills and handcuffs on a nightstand; the third, the woman drinking from a flask; and last, the woman naked, unconscious, and shackled to a bed. The accompanying letter is straightforward: worse revelations are on the way unless the mayor takes his own life first. 

An intricately plotted, deeply affecting thriller that keeps readers guessing until the final pages, The Dark Room tracks Cain as he hunts for the blackmailer, pitching him into the web of destruction and devotion the mayor casts in his shadow. 

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Moody and macabre with an Edgar Allan Poe feel to it, this book leaves an uncomfortable, indelible impression that can't be shaken by simply putting it down. The featureless Cain and his search for the woman in the casket are irresistible. San Francisco has never been so menacing." - Kirkus

"Starred Review. Moore calls this book 'the center panel in a triptych' that started with The Poison Artist. With this second electrifying noir thriller, readers won't want to wait until 2018, when the third, The Night Market, is scheduled for publication." - Booklist

"Moore, a terrific stylist, provides telling procedural details (a computer-expert friend helps identify the clothing and jewelry in the decades-old photos) and makes good use of the Bay Area setting. The elaborate plot, though, at times strains the reader's ability to suspend disbelief." - Publishers Weekly

"Suspense that never stops. If you like Michael Connelly's novels, you will gobble up Jonathan Moore's The Dark Room." - James Patterson

This information about The Dark Room was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Jonathan Moore

Jonathan Moore lives in Hawaii with his wife and son, and is the author of five books. Before completing law school in New Orleans, he was an English teacher, a bar owner, a raft guide, a counselor at a Texas wilderness camp for juvenile delinquents, and an investigator for a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C.

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