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A gripping new thriller from the author of The Poison Artist – selected for BBC Radio 2 Book Club with Simon Mayo
It’s after midnight, and SFPD homicide inspector Gavin Cain is standing by a grave in the El Carmelo Cemetery when he gets the call. Cain knows there’s something bad in the coffin they’re about to exhume. He just don’t know what. Only that it made a dying man certain he was going to hell.
But now a chopper is on its way to take Cain to City Hall on the mayor’s orders, and after thirty years in the ground, the mystery of Christopher Hanley’s coffin will have to wait a little longer. In its place, Mayor Castelli, lays out the pieces of a different but equally disturbing puzzle.
Four photographs of a blonde woman the mayor claims he doesn’t know. The last showing her naked and shackled to a bed. And a note claiming worse are on their way. Unless Castelli takes his own life first.
Castelli wants the blackmailer caught, and Cain is the only detective he trusts to do it, but as Cain starts to look into the mayor’s past, he finds himself being drawn towards a place as dark and terrifying and as full of secrets as the grave itself.
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group
It’s after midnight, and SFPD homicide inspector Gavin Cain is standing by a grave in the El Carmelo Cemetery when he gets the call. Cain knows there’s something bad in the coffin they’re about to exhume. He just don’t know what. Only that it made a dying man certain he was going to hell.
But now a chopper is on its way to take Cain to City Hall on the mayor’s orders, and after thirty years in the ground, the mystery of Christopher Hanley’s coffin will have to wait a little longer. In its place, Mayor Castelli, lays out the pieces of a different but equally disturbing puzzle.
Four photographs of a blonde woman the mayor claims he doesn’t know. The last showing her naked and shackled to a bed. And a note claiming worse are on their way. Unless Castelli takes his own life first.
Castelli wants the blackmailer caught, and Cain is the only detective he trusts to do it, but as Cain starts to look into the mayor’s past, he finds himself being drawn towards a place as dark and terrifying and as full of secrets as the grave itself.
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group
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Reviews
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.
Superb.
This one will also have you working hard to avoid paper cuts as you breeze through the pages.
An exceptionally deft and literate thriller that marks out Jonathan Moore as an exciting emerging talent in American noir crime fiction.
An exceptionally deft and literate thriller that marks out Jonathan Moore as an exciting emerging talent in American nori crime fiction.
Combines a storytelling style reminiscent of Michael Connelly's with plotting and characterization that will put you in the mind of Raymond Chandler ... The result is a novel that is remarkable in every possible way ... I did not want THE DARK ROOM to end. Ever. I wanted to keep reading page after page after tragic page, or, better yet, hop in the car and make that long drive to San Francisco for (probably) one last time, to walk up and down the streets and around the blocks where the story plays out. That is how truly good and mesmerizing this novel is. It is one of those rare books of such quality on every level that one is immediately prompted to catch up on the author's backlist, regardless of whether or not you habitually read mysteries and thrillers.
Superb.
Compelling: a stunning story.
An intricate thriller... Moore, a terrific stylist, provides telling procedural details and makes good use of the Bay Area setting.
Sharply conceived and even more sharply written ... you won't find [Cain's] equal anywhere this side of Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch.
With this second electrifying noir thriller, readers won't want to wait until 2018, when the third, The Night Market, is scheduled for publication.
Moore channels the moody intensity of Raymond Chandler's crime fiction and saturates The Dark Room with the brooding cinematic qualities of the mid-20th century's black-and-white film noir genre.
I did not want THE DARK ROOM to end. Ever.
Superbly stylish