The Dark Room is a stand-alone suspense novel by the author of the Jessica Shaw series, all of which I have read and enjoyed. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for this one, because of the unlikeable characters, implausible plot and contrived twist ending. This is a shame because the premise sounded intriguing.

Leonard Blaylock is a down-on-his-luck crime reporter from New York, who lost his career and his marriage five years earlier, when he blamed himself for the death of Red, a beautiful stranger he picked up in a bar for a one night stand. His only hobby is developing rolls of film lost by strangers, but when his latest image turns out to be of Red lying dead of stab wounds, he is compelled to investigate.

This is told from multiple different character perspectives, which felt unnecessary and became confusing. Leonard is one of the most unappealing protagonists I’ve come across - an unapologetic cheat, and it’s really hard to see what Martha sees in him. My biggest problem with this book, however, was the quaint idea that anyone would still use film professionally these days - especially private investigators and baby photographers. I started wondering whether this was set in the 90s, just not stated, but then smartphones and Instagram were mentioned so it’s clearly meant to be present day or thereabouts. (No mention of Covid.) The plot kinda hangs on this idea, which meant I couldn’t take it seriously. (I’m sure there are people who maintain dark rooms to play with film as a hobby, but the cost alone would make it unfeasible to use it for work purposes.)

Then there’s the ending - clever in that I didn’t guess which way it was heading but I was left feeling cheated, rather than outplayed, and ultimately dissatisfied. This wouldn’t put me off reading more from this author as she writes well and has interesting ideas, but this one missed the mark for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon UK for the ARC. I am posting this honest review voluntarily.
The Dark Room is available now.

I really tried with this one. I liked the synopsis well enough to request this ARC. I love thrillers and honestly I just did not feel the genre in this one. The MC is all over the place and the plot fell short. The only character I liked was the mysterious Red. I was hoping for a fast paced twisty thriller. This one was just not for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK for this ARC.

Former crime reporter Leonard Blaylock has a hobby of developing other people's film to pictures. He enjoys the mystery of what he finds in the photos. It is his only joy/outlet after he was demoted from his crime reporter position to be a freelance reporter and lost his fiancee to another person. The characters in the story are mostly unlikeable in small ways. It is hard to root for any of the characters to come out on top. But the story is filled with some definite twists and the ending still manages to blindside you. I didn't fully enjoy the story because the characters personalities and actions. But I was entertained up to the very end.
I would like to thank #Netgalley and the author #LisaGray for my ARC of #TheDarkRoom in exchange for an honest review.

Lisa Gray has succeeded in creating an engaging thriller, with a twist I never imagined!

The story begins with a cheating fiancé, approaching his wedding date, but contemplating his one last fling.
From that point on, we learn about people who buy old, “mystery” undeveloped film cannisters as a hobby, and
“Honey trapping”, a form of surveillance used by private detectives. ( both things I’d never heard of)
As the plot develops, we are thrown into the lives of five characters, who play significant roles in the story. Entire chapters tell each character’s story and how they interact in the plot.

The story has murder, revenge, love, hate and a giant twist at the end!

This was an enjoyable book, well written and easy to read!
5 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer publications for the ARC, in return for my unbiased review.

I really enjoyed The Dark Room. It had plenty of twists, turns and red herrings that kept me gripped throughout meaning I could not put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

This was a mystery set in a dark gloomy background, it enthralled me from the start and made me feel uncomfortable whilst reading, which is good as it sets the tone of what’s to come

I've often wondered how an author takes an idea and develops it into a book length story.
In THE DARK ROOM, Leonard was once a successful member of society. But his involvement in the death of a young woman was essentially a land mine that once he stepped on it, everything he touched turned to loss and failure. So Leonard spends his time buying and developing old rolls of film, looking for unusual pictures he could sell to raise money. The story takes a HUGE jump when one of the photos is that of a woman's murder BUT, the woman is the same one Leonard saw die five years before this picture was taken. The death that bombed Leonard's life.
This is definitely an original plot line. I'm sure there are people who collect old film canisters and develop them, but I've never met anyone who does. What Lisa Gray has skillfully woven the concept into a mystery/ thriller that pulls several "what if" scenes together into a pretty good " i didn't see that coming" book. Definitely should be read when you have more than 30 minutes to read because you are not going to put it down. Just a few more pages is going to keep you up very late to finish.

Secrets, lies, betrayals, and revenge…

Five years of guilt have tormented Leonard Blaylock, once a crime reporter for a major publication now a freelance journalist, a man just surviving the loss of his career and his fiancé by an act he committed that he cannot forget.

Leonard has a unique hobby that gives him some pleasure, buying and developing discarded rolls of film. The photographs provide a glimpse into the lives of strangers, a mystery to be solved by his imagination but there is a danger to such a pastime that he has now learned. On his latest roll of developed film can be seen the murder of a woman, a woman he’d known five years ago when he’d seen her die yet the picture in this film is not years old. If she didn’t die then, then what really happened the night his life went into a downward spiral? Someone wanted Leonard to think that the woman had died then but who? And what are the chances that five years later Leonard would find a picture of someone he’d known let alone thought he’d killed? Quite an amazing and unlikely coincidence.

Having pushed away all his real-world friends Leonard turns to an online buddy on a photography forum for advice, Martha Weaver, who agrees to meet with him. She’s intrigued by what he’s found and also appalled by the story he relates but she’ll help him and so begins their investigation into the truth of what happened five years ago. This reader wondered why a woman would agree to help a man who is basically a stranger after the story she’d been told, the answer to that question lies within the story.

This was an intriguing and unusual tale riddled with twists, secrets, and lies. The protagonists and others you meet along the way are not the most likable of people yet the author makes you feel for what some have been through but not totally because they did deserve some of what they received. It’s also a tale of revenge multiplied but whose ultimate revenge is the question to be solved. The book is well-written and suspenseful, beware of the unreliable narrator that this reader did not see coming, the unseen manipulator. There’s a great twisted different kind of ending, it’s told to the readers by the main protagonists, and I have to say that Leonard and Martha truly deserve each other.

This book is different from the author’s Jessica Shaw series which features an intelligent, likable, relatable, private investigator solving cases. This is a stand-alone novel filled with unusual off-kilter individuals whose sense of morality is questionable as is their psychological state of mind. The plot holds the reader’s attention easily, and is unraveled through the use of multiple points of view and jumps in the timeline. There is no lack of suspicious characters, betrayals, and blackmail abound and there’s an underlying perception of deception throughout the book which keeps the reader guessing.

An advanced reading copy was obtained from the publisher via NetGalley.

As soon as I read the blurb for this book, I knew I had to read it.

It was a fantastic read, well fleshed out characters and a good, engaging storyline. A red herring here, a red here there - keeping the reader guessing all the way. I read it in one day - enjoying it throughout, I was pleasantly surprised by the writing and how this wasn’t exactly what I would call your run of the mill thriller.

Overall it was a great read, and I would be very interested to read more from this author.

The Dark Room by Lisa Gray is a highly recommended thriller full of lies and betrayal.

Leonard Blaylock was a crime reporter before he cheated on his fiancée, Caroline Cooper, which ended very badly for his relationship and career. Now he freelances and spends most of his days buying and developing mystery film, the forgotten and discarded rolls of film of strangers. When he develops one roll, he finds pictures of a murdered woman. Leonard recognizes the woman as "Red," a woman he had a one-night stand with five years earlier, the night he thought she died, the night Leonard lost his fiancée and career. If she didn't die five years ago, then what really happened and who was she.

Leonard is an unappealing character, however readers will be sympathetic to his current situation, when he realizes he was deceived five years earlier and it was certainly a planned event. But it is also clear he was using drugs, cheating on his fiancée, and fled the scene when he thought Red had died. He contacts Martha Weaver, a woman he knows who is also into mystery film. The two begin to work together to try and figure out what happened five years ago,

The plot unfolds through the point-of-view of several different characters, and also moves in different timelines. This allows tension to build because you don't know exactly what happened and who did what. Leonard may have been behaving badly five years earlier, but he wasn't the only on harboring secrets and schemes. Oh, the darkness that hides in the human heart. There are multiple suspects and duplicity is prevalent at every turn. With the disclosure of new information uncovered during the investigations by Leonard and Martha, the narrative includes plenty of twists and surprises.

The story line moves forward at a steady pace as the new clues and information are revealed. At times you will have to suspend some disbelief, but this is an entertaining thriller. 3.5 rounded up.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Edelweiss, and Amazon.

I really enjoyed The Dark Room. The title, cover and blurb made me want to read the book. I read a lot of thrillers. The Dark Room ticks all of the boxes for the things I enjoy; fast pace, complex characters and plenty of twists and turns. This is a good thriller, similar to other titles I’ve enjoyed. The pace of the book is perfect for a thriller. I liked the way the book is paced, and the big reveals come at the perfect time. This gets a thumbs up from me.

I really enjoyed 2 of Lisa Gray’s Jessica Shaw PI mysteries (Dark Highway and Lonely Hearts, so I jumped on this opportunity to read another mystery by this writer, a standalone this time. A plot revolving around amateur photo processors seemed very promising, but I didn’t quite warm up to it. I’d prefer Jessica Shaw any minute!

I remember back in the days before digital photography how you’d give your rolls to a specialist, and wondering what those people saw every day (of course there were machines, but in theory the person would still be able to see whatever private secret you’d capture on your old Leica, Rolleiflex etc….). Apparently some people have the hobby to buy old analog film rolls (in flea markets) and to develop them, just to get a kick of the surprises they’ll find there. Why not? But what to do when you develop a roll of a crime scene?

Up till this very sentence I was all for it. But then when you add the information that the person actually knows the victim, and that the victim is supposed to have died several years before, I was… wait, what? Isn’t that a little bit over the top? I think the author asked too much suspension of disbelief from her readers. I didn’t really like any of the main characters, and there were just too many twists and lies to my liking. Too many coincidences, too many implausible situations. Lisa Gray is still a master of suspense and so you can’t really abandon this one mid-course, but by the end of it, I was underwhelmed.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book for review consideration.

The summary of this book sounded interesting and I have read other books by this author that I enjoyed. The story was confusing (to me) and unfortunately not as interesting as the premise. Leonard Blaylock has gone from a relevant crime reporter to collecting and viewing abandoned rolls of film. He never knows what could be on the film and establishes his own processing lab. Lucky for him, as on one of the rolls there is a picture of a woman who had been murdered, a woman who he believes he watched die of an overdose five years ago. He was cheating on his fiancée at the time, so of course things go from bad to worse. I finished the book, but truly couldn’t recommend it. I received an advance review copy at no cost and without obligation for an honest review. (paytonpuppy)

I’m a big fan of Lisa Gray’s Jessica Shaw P.I. series and so was keen to read her first published stand-alone thriller. It’s a great read.

Leonard Blaylock used to be a crime reporter and now he spends his days trawling sales and fairs for used rolls of 35mm film taken by strangers, which he develops. He’s fascinated by other people’s photographs and loves to think about who the people might be and what they were doing when the unknown photographer caught them on camera.

But he’s taken aback when he develops one roll of film only to find that it has been recently taken and that it shows the body of a young woman – a woman who has very clearly been murdered. Leonard is shaken. Finding a photo like this is bad enough, but he knows this woman. He knows her because five years ago he was there when she died.

It was, unsurprisingly, a night he will never forget. As a crime reporter he was riding high. He had a great career, was in love with his beautiful fiancée. And one terrible night changed all that for ever. It’s a night Leonard has never recovered from.

So how on earth has this photograph now emerged? If the woman wasn’t dead five years ago, what happened? And how did she come to be dead now?

Lisa Gray takes us through Leonard’s grisly recollections of that night 5 years ago when the woman he knew as ‘Red’ died. She’d been a casual attraction and what was an unplanned one night stand went horribly wrong. Leonard ran and never looked back, but his life was never the same again. His fiancée, a rising star in television, presenter Caroline Cooper ditched him unceremoniously and his career tanked.

Leonard turns to photographer Martha Weaver to help him figure out what has happened. She shares his fascinating with abandoned rolls of film and the two have become online friends in a forum for those who share this hobby.

Lisa Gray’s story is beautifully rendered. It twists and turns and keeps us endlessly captivated as new angles emerge and Leonard gets closer to finding out what happened the night he fled from a murder scene.

The Dark Room is told from a number of points of view. As the story unfolds we begin to see that this is a story as coiled as a python and just as likely to squeeze the life out of any of its characters. Not everyone is telling the truth and there are layers of deceit which build into a huge pyramid of lies that is in danger of toppling and bringing everything down.

Verdict: I really enjoyed the layering in this story and the way Lisa Gray slowly unfurls the truth, leaving us gasping right to the end. This is a terrific, well-paced read which will keep you guessing all the way through.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance read of this book.
Wow, this was amazing! A quick read, so hard to put down! My first book by Lisa Gray and i loved it. Dark and thrilling to the end. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A brilliant thriller, literally on the edge of my seat. Also a great insight into the minds of strange hobbies. Brilliant dark story

The Dark Room was a fantastic thriller, that I enjoyed reading with my spooky collection in October. I was shocked at the ending, one I was not expecting at all, and yet it fit into the story line flawlessly.
Between Lisa Gray’s writing style and the intriguing concept of developing “mystery film” I was hooked on the story. This was my first of Gray’s novels, but will not be my last.

Leonard has just developed a picture of a woman who’s been stabbed. But he’d been there when she died – from a blunt force trauma! How does that make sense? Five years ago, Leonard, a crime journalist, had picked up the girl in a bar, got her drunk, gone back to her hotel room and given her a couple of lines of coke although she claimed she had never done drugs. He was on the bed anticipating a great time, while she’d gone into the bathroom to get a condom, when there was a crash. He’d rushed into the bathroom to find her on the floor, motionless and not breathing, with an obvious headwound, surrounded by a large pool of blood. Envisaging his fiancée dumping him and his career in ruins, he cut and ran. However, his guilt gets him anyway – bye-bye fiancée and full-time career, hullo loneliness. His only escape, and his only companionship comes from a new hobby, which involves buying (eBay, boot sales, bric-a-brac stalls) lost or discarded film cassettes and developing them. He imagines the lifes of the people in the pictures and discusses the hobby on-line, but never meets any of the other hobbyists. The picture of the dead girl was taken recently but he’s not sure where he got the film from. Perhaps it was in a batch that he’d bought from a stall – a batch that he’d been steered to by an online friend. He contacts her, Martha, they agree to meet and a platonic relationship develops quite quickly. Ruling out coincidence, they suspect a set-up. But who and why? The investigation takes up the rest of the book.
The plot works extremely well, perhaps a bit too linear if you read it fast and unthinkingly. However, there are lots of subliminal things going on, always a feeling that no character is quite what they appear to be; always a suspicion that not all is being revealed because no one is ever telling the whole truth. Speaking of characters, the old Leonard is really quite an unlikable fellow, although he seems to be redeemed during the investigation, and the old Martha seems to be too vanilla, but does have hidden depths. An unlikely couple, with unresolved issues, but I think we may be in line to find out more about them and their relationship. As regards the writing style, I found it quite refreshing with a light touch and very easy to glide through, although the author is perhaps a bit enthusiastic about similes. The double twisted ending is surprising, a function of that subliminal feeling I mentioned above. Overall, I don’t think it’s a perfect 5 but equally it’s a solid 4.5.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

Loved the idea of old films being developed and never knowing what you will see.
Leonard finds a picture of a dead body that brings back images of something that had happened earlier. Trying to find answers with help from an online friend Martha.
Loved the premise of the book but personally had a hard time getting into it. The characters just didn't pull me in.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for an early release of this book.

I received this ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very twisty read that had my guessing at times to try and work out how Leonard saw someone murdered a few years earlier than saw her murdered in the present day!.

I also loved the idea of the old school camera films as that brought back a lot of memories from growing up as that’s all we had and I loved it.

This is a thrilling book that I’ll recommend to others .