This is my 2nd book by Will Dean and I really enjoyed it a great thriller that kept me guessing throughout with no idea where it was going would definitely recommend

The author takes to familiar waters after previous novel The Last Passenger – only this time instead of being above sea level we're diving deep deep below. Essentially a very locked room mystery, this tense tale follows main protagonist Ellen in her latest dive just off the North Sea. But we're only one dive in when disaster strikes and one of the six crew members dies. What follows is a four day decompression to avoid the bends in the smallest of spaces. But what if there's another catastrophe looming?

I hate confined spaces and water so this is the stuff of nightmares for me. The remaining crew are affected by an unknown enemy – is it the air they're breathing and if it is, is this accidental or is foul play at work. Each character has their own story so there's much background to be covered. And why not – there's four days until they can breath fresh clean air again.

I could feel every breath and movement made in the Chamber, adding to the claustrophic feel of the novel. Space is tight. Movement is limited. And when dealing with dead bodies that is totally not the environment you want to be in. You’ll be hit with a lot of technical information here so remember and read the author foreword to get a handle on the diving jargon. There's also nice little nods to technology of the early 2000s when it's set (Nokia phones, Snake, and a well-timed joke about a Jodie Foster movie of the time – well played Will).

As with any Will Dean novel, there are twists a-coming. And an ending that may well divide casual readers and fans alike.

But guaranteed, following one incident you'll never look at Raspberry Jam in the same light again.

Will Dean has once again produced a well-paced original thriller. This time, we meet Ellen Brooke who has a job as a specialist diver, known as Saturation divers, who go for long stints to work on deep sea projects repairing oil pipes. Dean describes in detail, the truly claustrophobic living and working conditions where the divers are literally on top of each other. The tense atmosphere is bad enough but when they start dying one-by-one, the result is breath taking. The level of detail on the living conditions and on the effect of the pressures on equipment as well as physiological effects is impressive. From a medical perspective, Dean is an excellent researcher and acutely accurate in his narrative of medical-related events. Usually one-room dramas are predictable and lack originality but not this one. Read it but remember to keep breathing.

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!

Ouf, I was so bored throughout this whole thing. I literally have nothing nice to say about this book and I'm utterly disappointed cause I was so intrigued by the premise :/

Not my cup of tea!

A tense extreme locked room thriller. I am a big fan of Will Dean but this one was let down by a really weak ending.
I was totally immersed - sweaty palms and all - with the concept of the deep sea divers locked in their pressurised container at the mercy of an unknown murderer - but the reveal when it came was disappointing and underwhelming. It won’t put me off reading another by the same author though.

Ellen Brooke is a saturation diver in the North Sea. She has a husband and two children at home, but she loves her job so much that she wishes to encourage other females into the extremely dangerous profession of saturation diving. That’s why she brings a camcorder to record everything and then turn it into a short film.

Her next job is off the coast of Aberdeen, in the North Sea. She is to spend a month locked away in a chamber with five other men: Mike, Jumbo, André, Spock, and Tea-Bag. Their living quarters are cramped, as they are literally sitting on top of each other.

Their only respite is when they are allowed out into the water to work at the bottom of the sea bed, each shift lasting eight hours.

When Ellen and her co-worker return from their shift, they find one of the men unresponsive in his bunk. They soon realise that the man is dead.

Who is responsible for this? Someone on the outside, or, dare I even say, someone who’s inside the chamber?

This was such a tense and claustrophobic read! I definitely got the Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None vibes when they all started to die, one by one. I was so anxious, even reading about their living conditions and what their job required them to do. I know it was their choice, and they got paid handsomely for it, but the idea of being stuck with five males in a small chamber just filled me with dread.

There are some nice twists along the way, which I certainly didn’t expect.

Overall, it is another great read from Will Dean. I definitely recommend it!

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for approving my NetGalley request to read and review this title.

If I could have, I would have read this book in one sitting. By coincidence I started reading the moment our tv was on, showing the launch of the Starliner. Images from the capsule showed two astronauts, all suited up, eagerly waiting to be on their way. Astronauts are very fit, very brave people who need to be kept alive with a great deal of instruments, people and most of all oxygen. The sat divers in Chamber are also very fit, very brave people who have to be kept alive, but not by oxygen, but by a mixture of gasses. Should anything happen to either the space capsule or the diving bell, the people in it are doomed.
Main character in this thrilling story is Ellen Brooke; she’s in her early forties and a very experienced diver. Stat divers start out as oxygen divers, but when they want to go sat diving – because they really like the work and the pay – they have to have more extensive training and a whole lot more experience. Just like astronauts, they form strong bonds with each other and the people that are there to keep them alive.
The astronauts in the Starliner experienced some problems but are, the day I’m writing this review, safely aboard ISS.
Ellen Brooke and her crew are not so lucky. Before long, one of the six crew members dies and instead of happy working on the seabed, the other five have to take care his body makes it safely to the mother ship.
From then on, the tension really sets in. While the author explains to the readers a lot of the technical and very interesting ins and outs of sat diving, the now five people abord have nothing else to do than sit and wait. They spend a lot of time thinking back about the start of their careers and the other dives they made. It is fascinating reading material – although I knew some basic facts about the material, physical and mental side of deep diving, I learned a lot from this book. And then a second crew member dies and the story suddenly is not about material, physical or mental issues, but all about the question: is there a murderer among the four crew members still alive?
Expect revelations, some of them rather sudden, and expect to learn about life and loss of life. Even if you think it is all a bit too technical for you, just read the book – all will be explained.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for this review copy.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book.

The Chamber was released yesterday, if you are a fan of Will Dean you probably know that already. Written in his usual style this one will certainly tick all the boxes for a lot of people. If you are in any way claustrophobic you might want to steer clear. Six Saturation Divers enter what is supposed to be their home for the next month. The job? Repairing and checking pipe lines at the bottom of the North Sea. They are locked in the Chamber as they need to be at the same compression as the sea around them, essentially so they don’t explode horribly. I learned about The Bends long ago (from Baywatch and Radiohead) but there are other, more horrifying ways to die when working in the ocean.

So we saddle up with our narrator, Ellen, and her five male co-workers. It is explained quite early on that there are very few women in this job, so the ratio is not a surprise for the industry. Ellen takes us through some industry standard explanations of what is happening, and all is going well, until it isn’t. Someone gets hurt, and they have to come back up – but it takes 4 days to decompress. If they open the doors too soon, they will die… but being stuck in close quarters with 4 other people and a dead body is no picnic. Just what happened to her co-worker?

An excellent who-dunnit that gave me a locked in feeling. I raced through it just so I could feel like I could breathe again. Recommended for fans of thrillers/mysteries.

6 experienced saturation divers are contracted on four week job deep down in the ocean. It starts off as normal routine operation but takes a turn for the worse when one diver suddenly dies. One dead body is certainly tragic: however, what does it mean when they find another colleague dead? Is it someone on the outside or is the killer closer? And who can you trust?
Amazingly researched book which I found gripping

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for this eCopy to review

The Chamber is a tense thriller, that had me gripped, as the story unfolds the pressure mounts up literally as the characters are trapped in a hyperbaric chamber as they work to repair oil pipes on the sea floor. One day a diver is found unresponsive in his book, who killed him? Is anyone else safe?

A fantastic locked room escape mystery

The Chamber is such a claustrophobic, but gripping read. I loved this story and read it all in one sitting. Will Dean has such a way with words, bring on the next one

I found this difficult to get into a first, I couldn’t imagine the chamber. As I read on I did start to begin to build up a picture and I definitely got the claustrophobic, locked in feeling.

The idea is an interesting one and I felt like it picked up as the book went on but it was definitely a slow burner.

There is an interesting cast of characters to follow but the story is told through the POV of Brooke, the only woman on bored. We also get flashbacks to her ‘onshore’ life which helps to develop her as a character.

Overall an interesting read if you stick with it.

It's very rare these days that I will stay up to finish a book. As I've got older and more sensible and know I will be tired the next day and its generally not worth it, I say no. Yet at 80% ish of this I thought oh just one more chapter until it was gone 1am and I'd accidentally finished it!
Not there's locked room mysteries and there's 6 people locked in a pressurised hyperbaric chamber locked room mystery. I'm not particularly bothered by confined spaces but sheesh did I feel stressed out by container everything was. Having 5 other people so close you constantly touched and knocked. It would get on my nerves!
The story is told by Ellen, the only woman deep sat diver, trying to prove her worth, knowing she's leaving behind her young family and possibly failing them as a mum.
Not long after her first dive, the youngest and newest member of their team, nicknamed Teabag, dies mysteriously. As they are deep underwater, there is little they can do to save him, and they are also responsible for the beginnings of a criminal investigation. The dive is called off but it takes 4 days to decompress.
There is a fair bit of technical detail which I bet was utterly fascinating to research. Every detail is vital and there are no info dumps. All the characters are unique. The banter is fun and you learn more as the book progresses.
My heart was pounding for most of the book because of the confined atmosphere and the high stakes. The ending is a bit of a make your own mind up I think. I have my theory!
I didn't think Will could beat The Last Passenger but this is another book jumping onto a top 10 of the year straight off the bat and another I will be thinking about for long after.

Wow! This guy gets better and better. His Tuva Moodyson series is excellent and now his standalones are coming close to matching them. He is the master at putting characters in confined spaces and extreme circumstances and seeing how they cope. Here we meet six divers who are due to spend a period of time beneath the ocean in the titular chamber, and things start to go very wrong. The tension is almost unbearable, the twists incredible. I loved it!

Enter the world of deep sea diving. Ellen is one of few women who work on the ocean's floor repairing kit, based in a diving bell. She is at the beginning of the tour with 5 men and is first to go out. On her return they find one of their number in trouble in his bunk. His death means the shift is terminated, but it will be days before they reach the surface as they have to decompress safely.

Cue a lot of psychological tension, as we get to know the other shipmates and begin to discover what is happening as well as hearing about Ellen's backstory. As is usual with this author, there are quite a few twists and turns to the plot as well. The result is a tense and fascinating read, especially if you've never had any connection with diving.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story, which is told well and really draws the reader in until you too cannot wait for them to reach safety. Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Woah! Imagine a book that you don’t want to put down but makes you feel slightly queasy from beginning to end! That about sums up about how I felt about The Chamber - it may not be one for the claustrophobics amongst us, but this latest standalone book from Dean is a masterclass in locked room thrillers.

Six saturation divers begin a job that will see them spend a month in a hyperbaric chamber the size of a minibus. It is an intense environment that takes a certain sort of person - but nothing can prepare them for this particular dive. When the least experienced of them is found unresponsive, they begin to return to the surface, but in order to decompress safely that takes four days. And when another of them dies, the mental and physical pressure mounts. Who or what is killing them and will any of them come out alive?

The world of saturation diving is a complex one and it did take me a little time to get my head around it - helpfully there is a glossary and a diagram at the front of the book to enable the reader to understand how it all works and Dean’s ability to describe it all in meticulous detail is remarkable. As we get to know each of the divers, we get to understand more of them - and question whether one of them is responsible ….

It is claustrophobic, it’s intense and the levels of suspicion just keep rising. It is the definition of heart pounding - not one for the faint-hearted but oh so good!

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 synopsis of this new book, The Chamber sounded terrifying so of course I had to read it. Six saturation divers 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?

The Chamber is a well researched locked room thriller unlike any other. The atmosphere is tense and claustrophobic. There is no safe escape for the divers who are breathing a mix of oxygen and helium in a humid and confined space.

I tore through the pages just wanting to know what happened next. This is an outstanding read that left me breathless. I'm still thinking about it long after turning the last page and I think this one will sit with me for a while.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an advance copy.

The chamber is a breathless intense book. The thought of being so far down and having only a limited amount of space had me feeling claustrophobic.

Six divers are in a hyperbaric chamber for a month, their mission is to work in pairs and dive down to the sea bed and repair oil pipes, usually each dive should be around 6 hours before they have to go back up. This line of work is very dangerous, any mistakes big or small could kill them all. Soon a member of the team is found unconscious. They must wait for four days before they are to be brought back up to safety but the group starts becoming suspicious of each other and don't know who they can trust.

This book was fantastic, a original and locked in thriller that once i started i had to finish it. Throughout we learn of the characters backstories and there is some twists and turns and moments that had me shocked. A most definite must read. Will Dean is an amazing author and every single time his books blow me away. The Chamber is definitely my favourite.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the copy of this arc in exchange of my full honest review.

The Chamber is a well researched and atmospherically chilling novel about six divers locked in a pressurised chamber under the North Sea.
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.......

If you are looking for a tense and claustrophobic locked room mystery/thriller then look no further.

4 stars