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A review by fusrodah
The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore
4.0
I'm a huge fan of crime based novels! The whole mystery and trying to solve it side by side (albeit almost always getting it wrong) is really interesting. The Dark Room intrigued me on this aspect.
The plot goes like this. Detective Gavin Cain is in the middle of an exhumation when he gets a call about how someone is blackmailing the mayor, and how he personally asked for the best detective in the PD (Cain) to get to the bottom of the whole deal. Cain tracking down the blackmailer and making a lot of revelations on the way is essentially our story.
Positives first - I loved how Jonathan Moore's written this book. Everything is subdued and gritty and has a realistic feel to it. There were a lot of instances where it could've taken a whole "Dan Brown"-ish turn into high octane exaggerated action. Instead, Moore portrayed everything almost exactly how it would've happened in real life, major props to that! boring logical decision by going back to the coffee shop This kind of gritty style might not be for everyone though.
The characters are pretty fleshed out and we grow to care about them. I liked how Moore had a way of giving us exposition without making it feel like exposition.
My gripes with this books are the ending and something that happens near the 80% mark. The ending is.... well meh. It leaves a sour taste and you don't really get that feel that you've found who the culprit is. It's not BAD but isn't that good either. As for the other problem I had
All in all I liked Dark Room and would recommend it to anyone who likes gritty crime.
The plot goes like this. Detective Gavin Cain is in the middle of an exhumation when he gets a call about how someone is blackmailing the mayor, and how he personally asked for the best detective in the PD (Cain) to get to the bottom of the whole deal. Cain tracking down the blackmailer and making a lot of revelations on the way is essentially our story.
Positives first - I loved how Jonathan Moore's written this book. Everything is subdued and gritty and has a realistic feel to it. There were a lot of instances where it could've taken a whole "Dan Brown"-ish turn into high octane exaggerated action. Instead, Moore portrayed everything almost exactly how it would've happened in real life, major props to that!
Spoiler
For instance when Cain and Chun chase the guy through traffic and into an alleyway, Cain doesn't rush forward gun-ho and try to kill him. No, he assesses the situation, and takes theThe characters are pretty fleshed out and we grow to care about them. I liked how Moore had a way of giving us exposition without making it feel like exposition.
My gripes with this books are the ending and something that happens near the 80% mark. The ending is.... well meh. It leaves a sour taste and you don't really get that feel that you've found who the culprit is. It's not BAD but isn't that good either. As for the other problem I had
Spoiler
Hated how the random Brit called him up and gave him exactly what he wanted when it was needed. It was a cop-out (pun intended) and totally went against the realistic setting the book had till then. My guess is Moore couldn't think of a better way to make Cain find it out on his own.All in all I liked Dark Room and would recommend it to anyone who likes gritty crime.