BLOG TOUR: The Chamber by Will Dean

“HIGH PRESSURE OUTSIDE
EXTREME PRESSURE INSIDE”

Published on 6th June, The Chamber by Will Dean is set on a boat heading out into the North Sea, where Ellen Brooke steels herself to spend almost a month locked inside a hyperbaric chamber with five other divers. They are all being paid handsomely for this work – to be lowered each day inside a diving bell to the sea bed, taking it in turns to dive down and repair oil pipes that lie in the dark waters. It is a close knit team and it has to be: any error or loss of trust could be catastrophic.

All is going to plan until one of the divers is found unresponsive in his bunk. He hadn’t left the chamber. It will take four more days of decompression, locked away together, before the hatch can be opened. Four more days of bare steel, intrusive thoughts, and the constant struggle not to give way to panic. Mind games, exhaustion, suspicion, and, most of all, pressure. And if someone does unlock the door, everyone dies…

Rating:

Today is my stop on the Hodder and Stoughton blog tour for this book. Thank you to the publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Enjoy locked room thrillers? Try fitting six divers into a small chamber deep underwater. Talk about no escape!

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called Last Breath which is about a diver who went missing on the ocean floor, which quite literally took my breath away. So this book instantly reminded me of this, although I’m very glad that it didn’t follow the same story and instead took its own twists and turns.

Having seen this documentary, I liked having a little knowledge about how these divers had to prepare for and live in these small spaces underwater. But I definitely didn’t need any prior knowledge, as Dean scrupulously details everything, so I could easily imagine their surroundings, feel their tension, and experience their confinement.

The setting immediately adds a suffocating atmosphere and I really enjoyed getting to experience it for myself. And then, of course, there’s a death, and things escalate quite quickly from there. Is this natural causes? Influence from outside the chamber somehow? Or the actions of someone inside?

The story really kept me guessing, and I loved having to question every character. However, I really had no idea, so I don’t feel like I was able to play the game of whodunnit very well. Overall, I think Dean’s focus here was more on research, getting the details right, and exploring a situation that could be very real rather than giving the story any grittier twists which is what I usually love about his books.

This sense of Ellen’s impeding doom is the only thing that felt lacking for me. She felt far too held-together for me, whilst I needed a little more haziness and fear in her narrative for it to steal my breath away. So while it missed out slightly on that shock factor for me, his attention to detail and authenticity are 10/10 for sure, and it’s great to read a thriller in this setting.

The ending is another one from Dean that may split audiences, but I love that he manages to do this to us every time! He’s certainly an author I always look forward to reading!

Details:

The Chamber by Will Dean
Release Date: 6th June 2024
Print Length: 352 pages
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Synopsis:

Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, they know that rapid decompression would be fatal and so they work in shifts, breathing helium, and surviving in hot, close quarters.

Then one of them is found dead in his bunk.

With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?

About the author:

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. He was a bookish, daydreaming kid who found comfort in stories and nature (and he still does). After studying Law at the LSE, and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden. He built a wooden house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. He is the author of Dark Pines.