Customer Reviews

The Dark Room

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read all of Minette Walter's books and I am constantly surprised. With each book her writing gets stronger and the plots get even more interesting.

She truly is a master of suspense. I find that I can't put her books down. Walters was able to take the amnesia plot and weave it in a way that makes it seem as if it were a new plot twist.

While Minette does not use repeating characters in her novels she never seems to have a problem getting her reader immediately feeling involved with the characters or the story. I highly recommend reading all of her books.

I found this to be an engrossing book, filled with all the necessary ingredients to make up a really good thriller-murder mystery.There have been 3 hideous murders, the first one 10 years previously and the other 2 committed in exactly the same fashion.All 3 victime were closely connected to Jinx Kingsley, daughter of a former crime boss, now become respectable and very wealthy.Jinx has a stepmother and 2 half brothers, all of whom are very undesirable types and who are involved in a number of shady dealings.Jinx is thought to have attempted suicide and is a suspect in the ghastly murders. A deranged and dangerous murderer is on the loose and the police are sure that everything points to her and her family. I did think that the final solution could have been reached a few chapters earlier,but all in all, it was a good and absorbing read.

The story revolves around Jane `Jinx' Kingsley, the daughter of a millionaire businessman and, until very recently, fiancée to another well-to-do gentleman. She has just been involved in a car accident, which looks very much like an attempted suicide. To top things off she's suffering amnesia as a result of the accident and can't explain the events leading up to the crash.

It's the all-important amnesia that is the key to this mystery/thriller as the police are desperate to piece together events leading up to the accident. They want to know whether Jinx was so distraught over the break-up with her fiancé that she tried to kill herself, or was there some other motive at work. They become even more desperate to get inside Jinx's mind when a couple of bodies are discovered dumped in suspicious circumstances.

From this point we are taken on a somewhat surreal journey through Jinx's life as police, and Jinx herself for that matter, try to work out what actually happened. Had she attempted suicide or was it staged by her to look as though someone tried to murder her. Or was it something more sinister, a murder attempt made to look like suicide.

Minette Walters has written a very interesting story of intrigue providing us with plenty of possible scenarios and suspects. As readers, we are displayed with a picture at the start of the book that is very incomplete and blurry. As the story continues, the picture is gradually filled in and starts to become sharper and easy to understand. It was very well done by the author. Another aspect of the book I found particularly interesting was the character of Adam Kingsley, Jinx's father. He never actually made an appearance in the book, yet his presence is almost overbearing thanks to the regular references to him. By keeping him at a distance to us he seemed much more menacing.

Although I thought this was quite a good story, it tended to ramble on a little in the middle and so, fell flat, before it was gathered up again for a strong ending.

The newspaper reported the case with relish. The famous photographer Jane (JINX) Kingsley tried to kill herself after her fiance left with her best friend Meg; both disappeared afterwards...But when Jinx wakes from her coma, she cannot remember the suicide attempt. With the help of Dr. Alan Protheroe, she slowly begins to piece together what she remembers of the last couple of weeks. the memories seem to come back...Memories of depression and absolute terror and nobody knows the real truth... Minette Walkers' book cought my attention from the first page and held it to the very last. You keep guessing the truth until the ned and even beyond it. The plot twists so hard it nearly breaks and every character has a motive. It is a brilliant writing and it wakes you think. Her characters are complex and interesting. "The dark room" is a fascinating and satisfying psychological mystery with interesting characters and a lot of twists in the plot. I love Walkers' style of writing especially because you have to find the truth for yourself.

An established star in the firmament of dark psychological suspense, British author Walters has won numerous awards ('The Ice House,' 'The Sculptress,' 'The Scold's Bridle'). This 1996 thriller opens with Jinx Kingsley, fashion photographer and only daughter of self-made millionaire Adam Kingsley, hospitalized and amnesiac after a horrific car accident. A suicide attempt is suspected, particularly since she was earlier found unconscious in her garage with the car running - apparently despondent because her fiance had absconded with her best friend.

Only Jinx didn't like her fiance all that well. She was on the verge of breaking up with him herself, even claims she had done so, although the accident came after a week at her parents', making wedding plans. Then two bodies, a man and woman, are discovered. And police discover Jinx's first husand was murdered.

Meanwhile Jinx's father has had her moved to a sanitarium where she is having a strong effect on her doctor, Alan Protheroe. By turns prickly, manipulative and vulnerable, Jinx becomes a suspect. As does her father, a forceful, unseen presence whose ruthlessness is legend.

Walters keeps the sands of perception shifting. In common with the other characters, the reader's view of Jinx is ambiguous. Her memory returns (or seems to) in painful flashes as the police piece together a skewed picture of greed, betrayal and sexual obsession. An aura of mystery and menace shrouds Jinx's dysfunctional family, suspicion corroding the bonds between them. Walter's writing is literate, character driven and atmospheric, making comparisons - and favorable ones at that - with Ruth Rendell inevitable.

While her style is gripping, her female characters very strong, and romance is kept to a minimum, I am also glad that this was not my first exposure to Ms.Walters. I found the ending rather too convoluted and was therefore unsatisfied. Pity, because I was gripped throughout, and only wish the ending came together better.

This book is a huge disappointment, given what an extraordinarily gifted writer Walters is, and how good her other books are.

The hero with amnesia is a plot device that one must be careful with, because such a story can degenerate into obvious reader manipulation if, as here, it isn't handled with finesse or creativity. Walters drops the ball with this one, and the result is a story that is on the level of Agatha Christie's lesser works, combined with an ending that is marginally better than "...and she woke up to discover that it was all a dream."

Even that isn't necessarily all that great a crime. Let's face it, when you're on vacation lying on a beach, Dame Agatha remains quite readable all these decades later. But if one is going to write something so predictable and pedestrian, one could at least have the decency to do it is less than FOUR HUNDRED #$&@ING PAGES!!!! Had this tripe been condensed into 200 to 250, which given the overall lack of content it easily could have been, it would have been worth an extra star.

A very very interesting book that catches you from the first page to the end of the book.A book that can take you from a very unpredictable beginning to a very intersting story and as usual a happy ending,except for the tragedies happened in the story. The main character being Jinx Kingsly,suffering from amnesia after her fiancee decided to marry her best friend and her car crashed which seemed to be a suicide attempt. For Jinx that was hard to believe but she couldn't remember what actually happened and couldn't contribute anything to the investigations.She was the prime suspect when the dead bodies of Jinx's fiance and his new girlfriend were found in middle of the forest. The story goes on an attempt to bring back Jinx's memory by her doctor and the attempts of the detectives to find out who killed them. Involves many people and descibes the charcters of the people in the story, a look at human nature and the different kinds og people in the world. Happy Reading!

With The Dark Room, Minette Walters has fashioned a fourth
jewel for her crown as Britain's finest young mystery author.
Her chilling stories, awash in sex and psychology, highlight
the all too human frailties we must recognize in ourselves.
In this case, a young woman suffering amnesia after an
apparent suicide attempt, finds she has lost the last two
weeks of her life. Not knowing whether she is a murderess
or the potential victim of a brutal killer, Jinx Kingsley
struggles to sort out not only the events of the immediate
past, but the complex relationships between herself and the
people who have influenced her life.

Unlike most women writers, one of Walters's greatest talents
is the ability to craft believable, compelling male
characters. The Dark Room is no exception, although in this
novel the most striking character is not her love interest,
Dr. Alan Protheroe, but a man who never appears on stage in
the book -- her father, Adam Kingsley. Though stark and
devastating, her prose is never lurid, and she adds enough
wit and humor to balance the mix to perfection. She is an
exceptional talent, and the mystery reading public is
fortunate she still has her whole career ahead of her.

Jinx Kingsley is found thrown from her car which has smashed head-on into a wall. It is believed that she was trying to kill herself because her fiance Leo has run off with her best friend Meg. Jinx's father Adam, a former gangster and now extremely rich and powerful businessman has Jinx admitted to a hospital where Dr. Protheroe tries to help her with her amnesia and why she doesn't believe she would try to committ suicide. Then Leo and Meg are found murdered and the police discover that Jinx's first husband was also murdered in a similar fashion. Now she and her gangster father are the prime suspects in three killings of which she can only remember bits and pieces.

The Dark Room is technically well written and Walters gives all the characters depth. The story keeps your interest enough that you want to know who actually committed the murders. However, the mystery is overplotted. Their are too many characters to keep straight and too many people lying so you, as the reader, never know what is going on either. The entire book devolves into nothing but conversations and question and answer sessions whether it's between Jinx and the police or Jinx and her doctor or Jinx and another patient or her half-brothers. Nothing happens for much of the book and it gets tedious covering the same ground again and again from a different character's perspective. Jinx, as the main character, is not all that likable either. She's petulant and arrogant and lies as much as everyone else. The ending is also a let-down, the real killer revealing theirself in an anti-climactic fashion and turning out to not have that much to do with the rest of the story anyway.