#BlogTour ‘The Dark Room’ by Sam Blake

About the book…

‘The Dark Room’ by Sam Blake is published by Corvus on January 7th in paperback and I am over the moon to be part of the Random Things Tours blogtour for the novel!

Hare’s Landing, West Cork. A house full of mystery…

Rachel Lambert leaves London afraid for her personal safety and determined to uncover the truth behind the sudden death of a homeless man with links to a country house hotel called Hare’s Landing.

New York-based crime reporter Caroline Kelly’s career is threatened by a lawsuit and she needs some thinking space away from her job. But almost as soon as she arrives, Hare’s Landing begins to reveal its own stories – a 30-year-old missing person’s case and the mysterious death of the hotel’s former owner.

As Rachel and Caroline join forces, it becomes clear that their investigations are intertwined – and that there is nothing more dangerous than the truth…

2 women, both not local to Hare’s Landing but with missions in place that bring them there, find themselves involved in a historical murder case.

The renovated hotel with a dark history, stuck in the middle of nowhere is the perfect place for Caroline to retreat, lick her wounds and plan her defence against accusations of professional impropriety. However,once an investigative reporter, always an investigative reporter! Strange goings on including doors slamming open, the faint scent of perfume in the air and a haunting refrain of Mozart played on the violin get her Spidey senses tingling…

Rachel, meanwhile, is in an investigative mission of her own, trying to tie in the disappearance of a homeless man who her partner, Hunter, was making a documentary about when he was knocked off his bike and hospitalised. Following  a break in at their house boat and fearing for her safety, Rachel heads to Ireland and together, she and Caroline team up to bring some much needed justice raining down on those who have gotten away with murder for far too long.

A spine tingling thriller which straddles the mystery and horror genres with aplomb, I could not put this book down. Apologies to the author, tour organiser and publishers for my late review, our house has been struck down by Covid and reading has been an absolute nightmare. It’s left me crying with frustration at an inability to follow more than a page or two of text at a time. And I would rather wait and do full justice to an author’s work than just flippantly publish a half hearted review, books are such works of heart that to do anything less would be an insult. What I would say about Sam Blake’s novel is that where other writers using the same plot lines would smack of massive coincidence and contrivance, in her skilled hands there is an ebb and flow in the plot, the character development and story arcs that only ever make sense and carry the reader forward.

It’s a book which requires concentration as there are multiple storylines carried across the chapters which alternate between Rachel and Caroline. Both are women with spirit and a finely tuned moral compass who are unwilling to let things beat them, and as for Jasper, Rachel’s ex-police dog companion, he is a brilliant creation. There are some fantastic scenes which have you catching your breath, especially a CPR scene which is so accurate and rarely well done in fiction. This adds such realism to what you are reading that when the haunting and supernatural elements creep into the story, you are swept away with them whether you believe in ghosts or not.

I am disappointed in myself for not having read Sam’s work before and thrilled to find she has a back catalogue for me to plunder. But first, a continuation of playing catch up with books, reviews and blog tour posts before buying any more books (famous last words of a committed bookaholic!)

About the author….

Sam Blake has been writing fiction since 1999 when her husband went sailing across the Atlantic for 8 weeks and she had an idea for a book.

Sam Blake herself is a character from the imagination of Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, who is originally from St. Albans in Hertfordshire but has lived at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland more years than she lived in the UK. She is a literary scout and a Board member of the Society of Authors.

Links-http://www.samblakebooks.com/

Twitter @CorvusBooks @RandomTTours @samblakebooks