📖 Book Review 📖

The Chamber by Will Dean
Hodder & Stoughton, 6th June 2024

In this tense psychological thriller, six likeable characters are enclosed in a decompression chamber for over a week after saturation diving, working on the sea bed.

Full of suspense, mystery, and heart-stopping moments, this book is typical of the author's deft prose. It's a fascinating and chilling insight into the underwater world of hyperbaric chambers and saturation diving, which I enjoyed immensely.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Will Dean for providing an eARC via NetGalley; this is my honest review.

#TheChamber #WillDean #HodderBooks #HodderAndStoughton #NetGalley #BookReview #ARCReview #BookCommunity #Bookstagram

The thought of me being a deep sea diver has literally never crossed my mind and it’s safe to say that after reading The Chamber, it’s not the job for me!

Will Dean does a terrifyingly good job at making you feel claustrophobic and trapped whilst you’re reading this story of six divers sent deep under the ocean to maintain oil rigs.

Ellen Brooke is there for a month with her fellow diving crew, six of them cramped into a tiny space where they must sleep, eat, wash and keep themselves entertained as well as carry out life threatening arduous work deep under water.

I was so engrossed whilst reading, even the thought of being stuck so far under the water for such an extended period of time- hideous to think about. And when mishaps & worse start happening on board, despite the crew’s intense vigilance , there is no way to get them out quickly.

Another nail biting tense read from Will Dean

To start with, I really have to applaud the fact that Will Dean took on a subject for the book that must have needed a huge amount of research to get right. There were lots of technical details to include and work into the setting on top of a more typical murder mystery. Because the diving is such an integral part of the book, it was important for this to feel right, and I personally felt like I was living and experiencing it all alongside the group of divers.⁣
⁣
There are really not many books that I can remember reading which have given me that horrific feeling of dread the whole way through the story, but this one was very successful. The sense of claustrophobia is unreal and I felt that kick in right at the end of the first chapter until the very last page.⁣ It was obviously quite an intense storyline to follow but I was actually surprised at how creepy it also was to read - the ultimate locked-room murder mystery with an extra layer of horror on top! There was just something about the book - the isolation, the cramped chamber, the danger and the fear that made this such an unsettling read.

Awesome, he’s done it again. A steady trickle of fact and fiction as the reader holds their breath on a path deep into the unknown. As if the setting isn’t enough, Will Dean throws in so many possible curveballs that you just can’t predict what’s going to happen next. Brilliant from start to finish, an eerie setting deep in the ocean where everything is not as it seems. I held my breath as this book blew me out of the water. Another 5* page-turner.

Every book from Will Dean is different. So well researched down to the smallest detail. Who could ever imagine a tense drama happing within a diving chamber. Well obviously Will Dean could. A brilliantly executed drama that ratchets up the tension slowly . As the reader we were also experiencing the countdown until decompression took hold.As well as tension the human interest stories of each of the divers was interesting
A nail biting scenario

Wow! What a book - Will Dean at his very best. This is one of the best "locked room" thrillers I have read.

6 saturation divers embark on a job in the North Sea that is about to turn into a terrifying nightmare, with no easy escape.

I found the insight into the world of saturation diving utterly fascinating. There was a great deal of research and I learnt a lot. I have a new found respect for the people who undertake this hard and challenging career!

The Chamber is narrated by Ellen, one of the few women in the world who work as a saturation diver. I thought it was brilliant that Will chose to have a woman as the main character in what is obviously a very male dominated industry and used the opportunity to drive home the underlying message that women can do whatever a man can.

As the story unfolds, the stifling claustrophobia, paranoia and unbearable tension created had me absolutely tearing through the pages, with my heart racing.

Really clever, really pacy and unforgettable, I throughly recommend this book.

Mr Dean and I have a complicated relationship. I adore his writing but I absolutely hate the things he puts me through, the suspense, the fear and also the rather impatient anticipation when I’m waiting for a new book.

I didn’t even read the blurb before jumping into this but immediately found myself pulled in by the fantastic world-building, the setup of a creeping tension and anxious energy. Taking a situation that would scare most people - living beneath the depths of the ocean and tapping into that fear, utilising the water almost as another character full of life and able to plot against us, with each small description or detail painting such a vivid picture. This entire tale takes place almost exclusively in a little tin capsule dangling in the abyss, and somehow the story keeps a brilliant pace and the scene feels electrifying, and even more claustrophobic when the bodies start to fall and there’s nowhere for them to fall.

Our narrator is brilliant- explaining the rules and customs of being a saturation diver without feeling like they’re just dumping information on us. Brooke clearly loves her job as an aquanaut, relishes the beauty of nature and respects its danger - that awe and wonder shines through the way she sees the world at the beginning. I also have to commend Dean for always managing to so respectfully and brilliantly writing from a women’s perspective, and always creating three-dimensional, complex women as his leading ladies.

I found the ending not quite what I’d hoped, I loved the parallels and the murkiness but it felt almost like it just “faded to black” and never really felt finished to me but that didn’t change the fact that the first 90% of this book was absolutely addictive.

Get ready for the single most intense locked room mystery you’ve ever read - and if you’re claustrophobic or love clear-cut resolutions, maybe give this one a miss.

Will Dean's The Last Passenger was one of my favourite reads last year.  I'm also gradually working my way through his back catalogue so you could say I'm a fan. 

The Chamber is a locked room thriller about six saturation divers who are working a job in the North Sea when disaster strikes. One of the team is found dead in their bunk. Unable to continue on as planned, the long days of decompression begin before the chamber can be safely opened and the divers released but who will be left alive? 

As someone who isn’t keen on enclosed spaces this book was an absolute NIGHTMARE. Will Dean researched this topic so well that I could honestly picture being stuck in this situation and had to keep taking breaks because it was making me anxious 😂 but it’s a fantastic read! Please pick it up

5 Stars from me!

Having read and been forever traumatised by loved The Last Thing to Burn, I am always reluctant keen to read a new Will Dean book and so was delighted to find The Chamber.

The tension that pours out from the pages of this book is immeasurable. 

I was already on edge once I realised that Ellen was in the chamber with five male divers, that set me on the journey to feeling uncomfortable right from the get go. Add in the dangers - everywhere - so many dangers. Add in the fact that there can only be an excruciatingly slow ascent back to the surface if anything goes wrong, and you are already reading and tense and highly pressured book.

But.

Then add in that one by one members of the team start to die and suddenly this becomes hell on earth (well, hell in the sea). I trusted NO ONE and simply had to keep reading as the painfully slow timers ticked down. 

The Chamber is yet another Will Dean masterpiece and I am already recommending it to people - shortly followed by the words (in a lower, more sombre voice) did you ever read The Last Thing to Burn...

Huge thanks to @NetGalley for an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

I read The Chamber over the space of a few days whilst I was in bed unwell. Between dozing and lying feeling sorry for myself I would plunge into the bleak, claustrophobic world of these 6 Sat Divers who were dying one by one locked in a chamber! It was a fun filled few days!
The premise certainly had me interested but I think I struggled right from the start. I'm one of those people who can visualise a book playing out in my mind but because the environment this book takes place in is so unknown to me I had difficulties 'seeing ' it and placing characters. Secondly, whilst I totally understand that life for these divers is so rigid, monotonous and strict, that doesn't exactly make for gripping reading unfortunately. And lastly, these characters were so professional and calm when the deaths did start to occur that the incidents just passed in a dull way instead of creating an atmosphere of panic.
I did like the reveal that came at the very end. I genuinely didn't work it out at all and never would have done. But then I was left wondering why.
Overall this was an average read.

Claustrophobic, tense pressurised 'whodunnit' (and how) thriller.

I've loved the tension in the other two Dean titles I've read, now making his name a 'yes please' when I see a new title. And here not only was it a fascinating plot, but the setting meant I had an education in saturation diving.

A group of six divers are inside their hyperbaric chamber, the pressure is increasing as they prepare to work under the North Sea oil rigs in their well-paid but dangerous maintenance roles. With one woman amongst them, all are highly-trained and able to cope in the cramped and psychologically demanding conditions of the tiny chamber. Trust is imperative. Routines and organisation must be spot on. A team work outside the chamber round-the-clock to keep them alive and well.

But then... one diver is found in his bunk, not breathing. The team can't open the doors, the death can't be investigated fully and they can't leave.

And what if the first isn't the last?

My god, this was tense! Trying to work out if someone on the outside or the inside might be causing the deaths (and how??). As you'd expect, the close confines and suspicious causes rifts, arguments and breaches in what needs to be one of the most trusting teams there is. Can anyone make it out alive, once the slow process of returning the chamber to surface level pressure has finally been completed?

And breathe. I loved the experience of reading this, of looking up from the pages at the free air, sunshine, large room where I could walk freely... and remember it was 'just a book'. Some great characters and backstories here (there is no note from the author to explain what research was done, if characters/histories are real, but I suspect they may be). You are constantly guessing who you can trust, what has happened to kill the divers, who might make it out in the end.

There are very sad moments of reveal, and I was glad the eventual denouement wasn't disappointing, though I had more questions.

I also have now a great deal of appreciation for those doing such dangerous jobs in the real world.

Excellent 'can't read this fast enough' uniquely-set story.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

On a boat heading out into the North Sea, Ellen Brooke steels herself to spend almost a month locked inside a hyperbaric chamber with five other saturation divers
All is going swimmingly (see what I did there) until one of the divers becomes unresponsive and the chamber is forced to return to the surface earlier than planned. But first they must spend a further four days decompressing in order to safely eliminate the gases built up in their bodies.
This was another cracking book from this author on the back of the brilliant The Last Passemger which was one of my favourite reads last year.
The subject I found fascinating and original , particularly given the recent Titanic submersible disaster.
6 divers living together for 5 days in a very compact space makes for a very claustrophobic and tense atmosphere and at least one of them isn't the person they claim to be This situation can make divers think and act in a very strange manner.. Each of the divers are suspicious of each other at times as events spiral out of their control but still they have to remain suspended at depth for several more days.
This was a real page turner and educational as a bonus. I do like a book with all the ends neatly tied up and the only thing for me that let it down was the ending which was very open and confusing. I kept clicking to turn the page on my Kindle before realising the book had actually ended.
Thank you to the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this early copy.

I have read a couple of Will Dean's previous books and have enjoyed them and this was no exception.

The Chamber is a take on the 'locked-room' genre but with a difference; six divers are locked in a hyperbaric chamber ready to start their four week shift working on oil lines in the depths of the Atlantic. All seems to be going to plan until one of the divers is found dead ... then another - what is going on? Are they being picked off one by one? Who is doing it? One of the divers or someone from the outside? So many questions!

Written from the perspective of Ellen Brooke, one of the very few female deep sea divers; this book is full of atmosphere and tension and whilst it has quite a bit of "technical-speak" at the beginning, it's necessary for the story and clearly Will Dean has done an awful lot of research as it felt authentic to me.

With great characters, oodles of tension and a real sense of claustrophobia, this is a great thriller that kept me guessing right until the end and afterwards and many thanks to the author, Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of The Chamber.

Thanks to @netgalley for my ARC.
Will Dean entertains me every year with his original books, starting with the brilliant The Last Thing to Burn. So I couldn't wait to dive back into his creative world.

Did it hit the mark? Not for me!

Personally, I think the blurb for this book is a little misleading. It is labelled as a thriller and described as an And Then There Were None locked-room mystery. My absolute favourite! It reminded me of Dean Koontz's brilliant thriller Icebound, but the similarities end with the authors' names.

I was expecting a breathless, adrenaline-fuelled whodunnit thriller with a countdown to find the killer before everyone died. Instead, I felt it to be rather repetitive, not much happened, apart from endless conversations about past jobs in between someone dying. Moreover, I felt no urgency, panic or particular suspicion on the part of the MC. In fact, the atmosphere in the hyperbaric chamber where the subjects are locked up to await desaturation was rather amicable until the very end.

I didn’t mind that the ending was left to interpretation, although I think it was pretty clear who committed the murders!

On a side note, you can't help but admire the research Dean must have put into this book, even if I was sometimes overwhelmed by the technical explanations. But if you like diving and love claustrophobic environments, I invite you to enter Ellen Brooke's world of deep diving and enjoy the swim.

I would like to point out that I am in the minority here with my opinion. I have read rave reviews for this book, so obviously I missed the essence of this novel.

I always look forward to a Will Dean release.. This one however I didn't enjoy as it was too technical and I didn't even really see it is as thriller. I can see how others would enjoy it but for me I found it too slow and bogged down with unimportant information.

I usually enjoy Will Dean’s books so was delighted to receive an advance copy to review. Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for my copy.

The Chamber is mostly set in a saturation diving chamber and is told from the point of view of Ellen Brooke, a rare female diver. In a very confined space with five other divers for up to a month, it’s not a profession for the faint hearted! When one diver dies, and then another, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. Who can be trusted and who’s to blame? Human error, technical fault, or someone with malicious intent?

For being set in one location for pretty much the whole book, the author does well to keep it pacy and apart from a small section, it didn’t feel boring or drag. I liked a couple of the characters but didn’t feel particularly invested in any of them, possibly because it’s all from Ellen’s point of view. All the characters seemed to have their flaws and their reasons for being so dedicated to the job.

Will Dean has clearly done a lot of research into the profession as it’s something most people wouldn’t know much about. There’s a helpful glossary at the start of the book.

The whole book felt tense and unsettling and the feeling of claustrophobia is evident throughout. If I’d had the time I would have read it in one sitting! I couldn’t work out what was going on and was desperate to find out what had happened. Maybe because of this, I felt the ending was a little underwhelming but I think it’s ambiguous enough to keep you thinking and make you question if Ellen is a reliable narrator.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. It’s a different take on the locked room mystery.

4.5 stars

With The Chamber, Will Dean has taken the locked-room thriller to another level, if not to a completely new dimension. I finished it in one breathless, nerve-jangling sitting and promptly joined the chorus of voices saying, ‘What the heck have I just read?’

The premise alone is enough to put you off enclosed spaces for life.

A team of saturation divers is locked inside a tiny hyperbaric chamber on a service boat, from where they will alternate shifts in a diving bell to carry out maintenance on an oil pipeline on the seabed. It’s a job they’ve done dozens of times before, and one that relies on absolute, mutual trust, not just amongst the divers but between the divers and the support team on the boat.

What happens to that trust when one of the six divers is found inexplicably unresponsive in his bunk and subsequently dies? How will the others cope for the four days it takes to decompress the chamber and safely let them out? Are they all at risk? Is there something in the air they’re breathing, in the food they’re eating? Or is there a murderer in their midst?

This was one crazy ride. Claustrophobic to the point of suffocating, it builds up slowly, then takes off like a runaway train, the twists and turns coming thick and fast, as the divers try to control their mounting panic and suspicions.

Too terrified to sleep, or to eat or drink anything that doesn’t come pre-sealed, the surviving divers pass the time by sharing war stories of past diving catastrophes and near misses, and in the process expose the deep mental scars each carries. As the hours count done amid further horrifying events and revelations, the tension mounts to an unbearable level.

More than anything, what makes this such a riveting read is Dean’s exhaustive research and the descriptive detail this brings to the narrative. The resulting authenticity is visceral.

But it’s the ending that delivers the sucker punch. As with The Last Passenger, it’s sure to divide opinion. Much is left unresolved. Questions abound. Many readers will be left bewildered and frustrated. For me, though, it’s another master stroke by Will Dean. One that forces us to think beyond the limitations of a standard whodunnit and focus more on the journey and the passengers than on the destination. Read it and let me know what YOU think.

Reading this book was an emotional journey for me. It was totally different from what I expected from a thriller. For many, it might not even qualify as one. However, I loved how the main character struggled every day, making her story incredibly relatable and poignant.

The setting in the Saturn chamber was fascinating. While some might find it claustrophobic, I loved the quiet and silence it offered. It felt like a refuge, a stark contrast to the chaotic world outside. The depiction of divers living wildly and the various intertwined stories of military life added layers of complexity to the narrative.

The protagonist's inner battles truly moved me. Her resilience in the face of relentless challenges broke my heart. The way she confronted her fears and demons was both haunting and compelling. Her struggle wasn’t just physical but deeply emotional, resonating with my own experiences of facing personal difficulties.

The ending, however, divided readers, and I understand why. I, too, found it hard to believe what really happened. It wasn’t the conclusion I expected, and it left me with mixed feelings. But perhaps that’s the mark of a powerful story—it stays with you, leaving you to ponder its implications long after you’ve turned the last page.

Overall, this book's emotional depth and unique setting made it a memorable read for me. It’s a story that lingers in the mind, challenging you to think and feel deeply.

Holy schmoly! What a ride this book was. I'm not usually a fan of 'action' oriented novels and tend to skim over fight scenes and the like, even when the author obviously knows their stuff. Having said that, in the last couple of years I've enjoyed TJ Newman's heart-in-mouth novels involving plane-based drama. I know one or both are being translated onto the big or small screen and I can see why. The Chamber by Will Dean blew me away for similar reasons. It's a literal pressure cooker of a novel - centred around a saturation diving crew - in a sardine can 100m below the ocean's surface. Their work is dangerous enough but throw in some suspicious deaths and you've got an extraordinary locked-room mystery.

Our narrator is Ellen Brooke, the only female member of the six-person dive crew, and through her we meet her colleagues, four of whom she knows well and has worked with often. We also meet some of their 90+ person support crew who we learn very literally hold our divers' lives in their hands. The tiniest of errors could cause the divers' world to implode or freeze them to death in seconds.

The level of detail Dean includes here - in relation to saturation diving and life lived in a chamber - is spectacular. Like I said I'm usually a skimmer but I found some of the information fascinating, such as the level of precision needed to pump hot water into wet suits while diving and the fact the divers are breathing heliox so those on the surface need an unscrambler to understand them!

There are a couple of other characters we meet a few times, including the expedition medic and the crew's boss who many have worked with before. Later we also meet a detective who boards the diving support vessel to investigate the deaths. There are of course also references to loved ones and families of the divers. Working in such close proximity and their need to depend on each other, means there's a strong level of camaraderie and trust.

I was already hooked as Brooke and another diver are the first sent down in the diving bell to do something or other as part of the repairs to an oil rig. Despite their significant experience there are several close calls - Dean delivering very edge-of-your-seat stuff for breathless readers.

And then one of the divers is found dead. There's no overt cause and it's assumed it's something to do with their health. Until another diver dies... and then we've moved beyond a coincidence. Because we've been given precise information about how food is passed through decompressed airlocks and water is pumped into the wet room/pot we pretty much know the chamber is impenetrable.

So this is the quintessential locked-room mystery because WHY and WHO are not the only questions... but HOW becomes important. Dean certainly keeps us guessing even as suspects start to dwindle and nerves are tested. And even though we're ultimately handed the answers... he deftly adds in a few so-quick-you-may-have-missed-it twists that could be frustrating, but are instead very very clever and may have readers pondering long after finishing.

I should mention that Dean also considers some deeper themes around work-related pressure and anxiety, its impact on families as well as grief and loss.

This was an excellent read from Will Dean. Really well written and with a growing feeling of extreme claustrophobia throughout, as a group of 6 deep sea divers are locked in a small hyperbaric chamber so they can work on oil lines. All is well until one of them is found dead in his bunk! 4 days are needed to decompress the chamber before they can be freed and in the meantime the distrust and suspicion amongst the divers grows…as does the body count. A gripping read!