I will probably be very unpopular with this review as I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the authors previous books.

The premise sounded great, six sat divers in a confined space for long periods. The descriptions of their life on board initially were interesting however I felt they soon became repetitive. I enjoyed learning about this type of diving initially but the book just became more words to read.

As the book progressed I hoped we would have one of Mr Dean’s flawless endings that have previously wowed me but we didn’t. In fact the ending left me with so many questions that I’m not sure what actually happened.

I won’t give up on this author as I know he has written some of my favourite ever books.

I absolutely love Will Dean. I’m pretty sure he could write an instruction manual and I’d buy it, so this probably isn’t the most unbiased of reviews but this really is a brilliantly terrifying read.
6 saturation divers who know each other well (except the newest crew member) are in a hyperbaric chamber, being lowered off the shore near Aberdeen to do some maintenance. Our narrator is the only woman on board; a rare event. Ellen is documenting her experiences to try to encourage other female divers.
They are supposed to be away for a month, but on the first day of work, one of the crew members dies, and they need to be slowly raised to the surface to prevent the bends. Then another crew member dies…and suddenly it feels like there might be a threat from within, or from without, from things passed through the food hatch. What is going on? Who can the remaining members trust?

This is a very claustrophobic read. Will Dean’s last book, The Last Passenger has put me off cruise ships for life and now I’ve also ruled out a career change to becoming a saturation diver. He’s got a real knack for the gasp out loud moment too- I did not see this one coming. Right until the last page it’s hard to know what is going on. The fear conjured up about being trapped in a tiny chamber, at the mercy of someone else for days on end is palpable. I picked this up yesterday and didn’t put it down, which is surely the mark of an excellent thriller. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Set deep beneath the surface of the North Sea this a locked room thriller that quite literally takes your breath away as one by one the deep sea divers succumb to something, but what ! What or who is picking them off and why ahhhhh well you have to read the book to figure that one out !
This was such a claustrophobic read and full of atmosphere it really had me guessing till the very end it was full of interesting facts and descriptions about sat divers and working on the ocean floor a subject I knew nothing about, Will Dean had obviously done a lot of research and this really came over well in the writing.
I liked the characters and the stories they had to tell, the setting was spot on for a locked room novel and really did enjoy the read.
So another fabulous standalone read from Mr Dean and one I can highly recommend, many, many thanks Mr D.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review. I am a big fan of Will Dean’s and I was excited to read his new book. I have to admit that I think this is now my favourite book by the author. This book is full of mystery, suspense and atmosphere. A truly compelling read that left me feeling completely claustrophobic and my nerves shattered. I literally felt as though I was in that chamber at many points and I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. I absolutely recommend this book to all. An easy 5 stars from me.

When I hear the words 'locked room thriller' you already have my attention.
This is an author that I have had mixed results with. Some of his books have been 5 star reads for me and some I really haven't enjoyed, so I was interested to see where this one would land and I had high hopes going in to this.
OUTLIER ALERT!
This was a big miss for me.
It was atmospheric but I never once found it thrilling or even that tense. I was never once gripped by the plot and I actually found it VERY dull throughout.
I did like the characters and how they interacted with each other but that was the only thing I did like.
It also seemed to me to be so repetitive. I lost count of the amount of times we are told that they have to keep things clean. WE GET IT.
The ending was a big fail too. I was left with an overwhelming feeling of 'is that it?' The whole thing felt totally pointless and there wasn't actually much plot.
This was a very disappointing read for me and I'm not sure I will read from this author again, I just don't seem to gel with his writing style.

I'm getting used to Will Dean filling my head with bizarre dreams at night. He has a way of writing that creeps into your mind and sits there, taunting you all day until you open the book again. The detail in this story is meticulous. Having heard Will speak on how he plans his novels, I'm sure he spent considerable time researching saturation diving before he went into his own isolation to write the first draft.

I knew very little about saturation diving before reading this. Thanks to all that detail, I know quite a bit more now. I could easily imagine the space in the chamber, although I think for my own sanity, I made it a bit bigger in my head. It is, quite literally, a claustrophobic read. It has similarities with The Last Passenger in that things are going majorly wrong and no one knows why. Most importantly, no one knows who to trust. At least on a cruise ship the characters had space to get away from one another. Not so in The Chamber.

Will Dean has paced the story well, especially with time slowly ticking down as the chamber is depressurised and, although freedom beckons, madness descends among the crew. It's a classic Will Dean ending where you find you still have questions that will never be answered. I suppose the real question is what will the next book be about? I'm predicting caving.

I love Will Dean’s novels and how they twist and turn so much you are never quite sure what to think. The Chamber is a fascinating world of deep sea diving which is all going well until one of the crew drops down dead. I really enjoyed the story and trying to guess who was the murderer!

This was a tense, nail-biting read which combined two of my worst nightmares: the thought of being underwater and confined spaces!
Ellen Brooke is about to spend four weeks on the sea bed with five other divers, most of whom she knows and trusts - a necessity because the smallest error could lead to death. Just after starting work, the newest recruit is found dead in his bunk and they are ordered to return to dry land. They face four days of decompression before reaching the surface. When a second member of the crew also dies, panic takes hold. This novel was atmospheric, compelling and threatening with an unsettling end which left me feeling the need to look over my shoulder. A great read.

I was delighted to be approved by NetGalley to read The Chamber by Will Dean. Since reading The Last Thing To Burn, I had been looking out for his next psychological thriller.

The novel is about a team of saturation divers locked in a decompression chamber. I found the first third of the novel a little boring and full of jargon, but glad that I continued to read on.
When one of the divers dies suddenly and suspiciously, the secrets start to come out. Tension galore makes this a real page-turner as one-by-one they meet their death.

As a thriller, it has heart-stopping moments and an edge-of-your-seat vibe. Overall, I preferred The Last Thing To Burn, as The Chamber had that awful 'double-twist' ending which I had already predicted yet hoped I wouldn't get.

Entertainment factor, though, I would highly recommend.

A team of six saturation divers face a job where they are confined together, under extreme pressure, to a small capsule. Shortly after the job begins one of them is dead. Was it natural causes or murder?

Will Dean has produced the ultimate in locked room mysteries with his latest offering, The Chamber. The protagonists are saturation divers, they live in a small chamber on the deck of a ship. The chamber has been pressurised to match the depth at which they will be working on the sea bed and takes days to change back to normal. The chamber is one room, the size of an SUV, and a separate ‘wet pot’ for bodily functions and showering. With six people in such a confined space, with nowhere to hide, we are faced with a locked room mystery that leaves no corner to hide.

The story is told from the perspective of Ellen Brooke, the only female among the team of six. Ellen knows four of the other divers, they’ve all worked together at one time or another. The job is so specialised that the field of suitable candidates is small. The sixth diver, Tea-Bag, is new, it’s only his second saturation dive. Within hours of being in the pressurised chamber, Tea-Bag is discovered dead in his bunk. The group are faced with two problems; firstly, it will take four days to return the pressure in the chamber to normal, and secondly, how did their colleague die?

As the crew grapples with their enforced confinement, we learn how dangerous their job actually is. Not only do they face peril from the things we expect, they also have to deal with issues we would consider to be minor. The pressure means that the chamber is a hothouse where bacteria can multiply rapidly. The divers must ensure that everything is kept scrupulously clean. Being so reliant on everyone doing their utmost to ensure everyone is kept safe, along with the specialised nature of their job, gives a sense of camaraderie. As they begin to wonder if that trust is misplaced a sense of paranoia begins to set in, showing us that the dangers are psychological as well as physical.
Confined quarters and growing distrust leads to introspection. The surviving divers share memories of some of the jobs they have worked on previously and this makes for grim reading as we learn about the disturbing reality of some well-known maritime disasters. Thankfully, Will Dean doesn’t go overboard with the descriptions.

The conclusion becomes a life-or-death race against time, with the claustrophobia and tension building to the point of explosion. My nerves were on edge as I was willing away the minutes until the hatch could be opened and the truth revealed.

I first came to Will Dean in 2022 with First Born. I then read The Last Thing to Burn, followed by The Last Passenger, and was thrilled to get a copy of his newest book. Every now and again you find an author who was missing from your life and for me, Will Dean is that author. Whenever I read a book of his, I think it can't possibly top the previous one, and yet it always does.

There is no hanging about in this book. Within 2-3% of the book we know our main players, the setting, the task. We get to know more about it as the story goes on, at the same time sometimes as the characters, which was exciting.

I know next to nothing about decompression chambers and whatnot, outside of what I've read in fictional books, but it all sounds so right that I'm assuming Will is either a secret deep-sea diver or his research is top notch.

Will is an expert at creating a sense of setting, weather, clothing, appearance. It's full of detail but none of it seems extraneous or surplus. We can imagine each person very clearly in our heads, which makes it easier to become invested in the story. We can hear the birds calling above, smell the salty water, feel the pressure forcing down on you. And yet it never feels unreal. It's all so frighteningly familiar, and yet distant.

I made the mistake of googling what would happen if the hatch was opened and the pressure changed, resulting in, most likely, immediate death. I advise you not to google it, or at least don't google in images. That's something no-one needs to see, but it did give me more of a sense of the importance of the job when reading it.

This one was slightly more niche than his other works. His previous books, whilst unlikely, contain scenes and situations that anyone could find themselves in. But this one is very specific to a few individuals which I found interesting, as I couldn't immediately put myself in their shoes, which made for a different reading experience.

For a book set in one very small setting, it was full of twists and turns and secrets. The enclosed settings adds to the claustrophobic feeling the reader gets; it's a very clever, and probably not easy, way of writing. For me, the thrill comes from this environment, from the claustrophobia, from the characters, rather than the plot. We start to question things like the characters do: who can we trust? Can we trust our colleagues, the outside crew, or even ourselves?

It is thrilling, fast-paced but not rushed, entertaining, frightening, tense, mad, emotional, heart-stopping, sad; it's just absolutely everything and more.

A thriller set in the world of saturation diving, where a group of divers are locked inside a decompressed chamber. When one of the divers is found dead, the others can’t simply leave the chamber, they’ll have to wait days for decompression to be completed before they can leave and tensions are running high…..

I have read everything Will Dean has read since The Last Thing to Burn. He is a master at putting together a tense situation on the age which leaves the reader feeling the same.

The premise of this novel was really interesting and not something I’d heard a lot about. It did put me in mind of the tv show Vigil which is set on a submarine. There was a similar sort of dread bubbling where the characters start to realise that they may be trapped with a killer amongst them.

I would say that this probably didn’t quite live up to my expectations but that’s perhaps because the authors last couple of books have just been THAT good. This is still a great thriller with a new premise that was gripping.

I’d recommend to fans of the author and if thrillers generally.

What an incredible ride! Tense, taut, suffocating and tremendous! I LOVE Will Dean’s writing for exactly these reasons! (I also learned a LOT!) I read The Chamber in two days on holiday (swimming in the deep Cretan sea whilst snorkelling was an unnerving experience after reading this…) A newfound respect for divers on all levels! Incredible book. I hope Will Dean is writing more as we speak!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I loved this book. The detail. The tension. Learning about a world I didn’t even know existed.

As one of the few female saturation divers, Ellen has learnt to put up with a lot. But when one of the divers on her latest job is found unresponsive in his bunk, she finds herself being pushed to her limits. It will take four days of decompression, locked away together, before the hatch can be opened. And four days is a long time when you don’t know if one of you is a murderer…

As a long-time crime-fiction fan, I’m always looking for something a little different, and The Chamber certainly fits the bill. My favourite part was actually the beginning, before anything has even happened, learning about saturation diving, and feeling the tension mount as I knew something bad was about to happen. I loved the sense of this being a dangerous setting in its own right, through the risks of saturation diving, and of locking six people together in such close quarters.

I have to admit that I liked the concept of The Chamber more than the execution, as I found the way the story is largely told through past stories and memories a little slow-paced and repetitive. But this really was too good a premise to miss, and I loved learning more about saturation diving. I also couldn’t help but stick with the story once I’d started, needing to find out what happened next.

My most anticipated read of 2024 and what I think will be the most disappointing? The Last Passenger by this author was one of my favorite books of 2023 so my expectations were sky high for The Chamber.

The premise of this book sounded SO fun albeit claustrophobic, the perfect setting for a thriller? The descriptions the author provided did not provide a clear enough picture to me as a reader. I had to go and google to actually be able to 'envisage' what was going on.

All of the character had a nickname as well as a 'christian' name which was confusing and unnecessary as all would be used at random times.

We were told 18 TIMES (yes I searched) that they wiped down the sides of the chamber along with that they would be turned into raspberry jam 6 TIMES throughout the book.

Pacing was all over the place. The BIG (questionable) reveal still had not taken place with only 8% left of the book. The ending left me like ?!?! what actually happened.

Overall a big fat disappointment, but the first 30% was OK!

Six saturation divers are locked in a hyperbaric chamber when one is found dead. When another is found shortly after they begin to realise these may not be an accident. Is someone taking them out one by one?

I was excited to read this as I have really enjoyed all the other Will Dean books I have read and this was such an original, clever concept. This is the perfect example of a locked room thriller and the claustrophobic, intense setting work very well. I didn’t know much at all about this industry before reading but found it all fascinating, while also quite terrifying, and came away having learnt a lot; it’s clear the author has lots of knowledge and has researched well.

The overall story is a bit of a slow burn, however sped up as it went on. This is another intense, intriguing mystery by this author and I can’t wait to see what he thinks up next. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in return for an honest review.

If there is one word I would use to describe Will Dean’s previous thrillers, it would “pressure.” Through the so-far five Tuva Moodyson thrillers, as well as his handful of standalone works, Dean has proved an expert when it comes to mounting tension on his protagonists, creating more and more pressure to weigh them down. That comes to a head here, with “The Chamber,” which builds up the pressure on the characters quite literally.
Following a group of deep sea divers, Dean’s latest novel kicks off with a sudden and shocking death with seemingly no cause. From there, we have an ominous ticking clock covering four days as the remaining divers are trapped within a hyperbaric chamber awaiting a return to the surface and an escape from decompression. Mistrust and manipulation soon become the order of the day as the remaining divers face off against their own exhaustion and one another, trapped within the small metal chamber so very far from the rest of the world.
Expertly paced and with an overwhelming level of tension, Will Dean has created a world here that feels so very frightening. The isolation and trauma that seeps into nearly every page of “The Chamber” is remarkable. Every character feels as though they have lived a life before the start of this book; everyone has secrets, everyone has a past, and Dean uses this wonderfully to crank up the pressure from chapter to chapter.
The final act features a handful of twists and turns I didn’t see coming that were shocking, but didn’t quite hit me in the gut to the same degree as moments in “Bad Apples,” “First Born” and “The Last Passenger.” Dean has shown from his previous work that smaller and tighter narratives can be a hell of a lot scarier (“The Last Thing to Burn” remains not only his greatest work, but arguably one of the best thrillers of the last 20 years) but “The Chamber” manages to feel both small and tight, as well as sweeping and epic.
I am a huge fan of Will Dean’s work, and I am always incredibly excited to see a new one on the horizon. I cannot wait to see what lengths Dean will go to in order to build up even more pressure in the future.

Really great insight into the lives of sat divers. Kept me engrossed throughout. Highly recommended.

One of my favourite types of thrillers, a book that pairs a claustrophobic setting with a unique profession and compelling, twisty plot. I had no idea that this type of diving existed. I was hooked!