The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | January 2017 | 304 pgs

Source: Library

SFPD homicide detective Gavin Cain is overseeing an exhumation work when he receives a call from his superior, Lieutenant Nagata. The casket they are digging and a cold case will have to wait. Cain has finally found something which might shed some light on the case they have been working on for years, thus he is perplexed why he is being called for until he realised it is a request from San Francisco's mayor, Harry Castelli. 

When Cain meets Harry, the latter shows him a short note and four photographs he received. The four photographs offer some depictions of what's happening when they were taken, though the actual event isn't clear and they could only speculate. But that's not all, whoever sent these stuff to Harry wants him to take his own life or worse revelations will come by the end of the week. As Harry races against time with FBI agent Karen Fischer to unravel the truth and hunt for the blackmailer, they would soon realise that there is more than meets the eye and that the casket he is digging may connect with Harry's case. 

I read Jonathan Moore's The Poison Artist a while back and was impressed by his storytelling and his writing style. The Dark Room continues his signature of the above and I've to say TDR was more tense and have a multi-layered plot which I didn't see coming from the beginning. Part suspense and part police procedural, I was hooked from the opening featuring a determined homicide detective Cain while he opened up a cold case thirty years ago. With a few pages in, the reader could tell that he is an uncorrupted cop who would not allow himself to waver and crumble under pressure, and certainly not from the powerful mayor Castelli. Aside from that, he is also a considerate and attentive lover when his girlfriend, Lucy, is concerned. One could easily see why considering Lucy was one of the victims and the only adult survivor of a school mass shooting four years ago. That incident led Lucy from a shining talented pianist to a timid woman who hides in her house 24/7. Cain's camaraderie with his two other subordinates and their investigations add intrigue to the story and I found these scenarios are just as intense as the plot as they encounter difficulties and danger as they dig deeper. I'm glad to hear his next release, The Night Market, will be released in January 2018. I'm definitely looking forward to that. 

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