Six saturation divers living at high pressure inside a small hyperbaric chamber in order to work on the sea floor are thrown into the middle of a murder investigation when one of them turns up dead. In the four days until they can be released from the chamber they will be stuck in a high pressure situation in more ways than one.

This book has a super intriguing premise, you can't do better with a closed door mystery than a sealed hyperbaric chamber. Learning about life in the hyperbaric chamber is fascinating, but can be a pass for those that don't like any science in their books. This book was full of tension and felt claustrophobic with such a small enclosed setting.

I would highly recommend The Chamber to those who like who done-it mysteries with a bit of science.

a little too dense for my liking about what a hyperbaric chamber is. I didn't think the plot had enough drive and I grew quickly bored.

Will Dean is such a master of locked room mysteries!!

The Chamber is an intense and claustrophobic story surrounding six saturation divers who are trapped in a hyperbaric chamber trying to survive decompression after one of their crew members mysteriously dies. Was it an accident? Was it murder?

The clock is steadily ticking as readers progress into The Chamber and with each hour that passes, Dean ramps up the tension to a new level. I was so stressed by the end that I could not physically put this book down until I finished it. I knew what I thought was happening, but was I right? And if I was, why the heck would that be right??

Not only has Dean put together a fantastic thrill ride of a book with The Chamber, but I also feel like I walked away knowing so much more about saturation diving.

This is a hard one for me to rate. Did I like it? Yes. But were there things that irritated me? Also, yes lol. The Chamber is certainly a claustrophobic, locked room mystery and the feeling of dread was palpable. But the suspense was overshadowed by the constant info dump about diving. Not only that, but I don’t think it was very clear WHO was behind the murders. It’s up to readers to decide whether it was one character who has weird and very bad thoughts or the person who was accused. As a reader (and this is my personal preference) I like clear answers, and this one had me with way more questions than the answers I craved when I got to the end.

I guess it all boils down to this. Would I recommend it? Maybe. If you like to learn something new while reading and diving is an interest, then I think you’d like this one. If you don’t like the constant info dump, then it may not be the book for you. I know there are many Will Dean fans out there and I definitely recommend reading his books at least once, but some readers may not enjoy his style as much as another person would. I’ll give his books one more try before I decide if he’s a miss for me (his previous book that I read was The Last One which I gave 3 stars as well).


𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐⭐⭐

3.5 stars rounded down

Extremely claustrophobic novel about SAT divers. You can tell Dean did his research! The ocean has always freaked me out and if I were in a chamber like this I’d freak. Talk about PRESSURE (haha).
What would you do if you were stuck in a small chamber with a few of your co-workers, some you don’t even know a thing about…and they start dying?!?!
I was enthralled at first, but I started to feel like it was dragging towards the midpoint. Perhaps that was Dean’s intention to make the tension draw out like the divers waiting to surface and get out of that hyperbaric chamber where they breathe a helium mix. I cannot imagine what they even sound like

Over all, not bad from Will Dean. I enjoy his style of writing and look forward to reading more of his books.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the Advanced Reader Copy of The Chamber by Will Dean.

I was a big fan of the last book that the author put out. But I feel like the story had potential, but it just didn’t do it for me. I think that we need something different and away from the ship setting in the next book that he releases.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader’s copy.

I read The Last One last year and literally went "wait wtf" outloud at the end, so I knew I needed more Will Dean. This one definitely had a different vibe, but the writing was still really solid which was one thing I really appreciated in TLO, too. Dean does a good job at characterizing the space and the people, which serves to create a tense and atmospheric story. I was so hooked, from the get go, and just like TLO I was left reeling after each twist. Dean has such creative and well-woven ideas, can't wait for more!

I've been off thrillers lately because so many feel formulaic and predictable, but this was a fresh and inventive premise that reeled me in. It's the story of six saturation divers - deep sea divers usually hired by oil companies to do repairs on machinery deep underwater and stay in a diving chamber at depth for around 30 days. It seems like a normal mission at first, but one by one, the divers start to die suddenly from some mysterious illness. As soon as the first diver dies, the mission is cancelled, but the slow and arduous decompression process means the divers are stuck with each other - one of them being a potential murderer - for weeks as they go back to the surface.

This is a well executed locked room mystery with great gradual character reveals and good tension. The pacing felt a little off at times, with some moments in the sub taking forever and the ending feeling rushed. I also wish I could visualize the complexities of saturation diving a bit better, which is so important for understanding how this process works. Overall - a solid and worthwhile thriller!

Special thanks to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Goodreads (won an ARC) for advanced copy for honest review.

I was approved for this book one week before publication, but I'm here to tell you, I didn't need but a rainy Saturday afternoon and a pot of hot.

The Chamber really grips you from the start as you have hours to get ready to go into a cramped (and I mean cramped) living quarters to do your job as a Sat Diver. This job is not for everyone. We follow along with Ellen Brooke who has been doing this for years. This is her happy space where she feels the most comfortable, where she can get away from 'the world' for a month at a time. Will Dean has given us a glossary of the spaces inside, how things work outside, and everything between to keep the divers safe. You actually learn a lot. Everything starts off great, until Will Dean's twists come into play (If you know, you know)! And with no spoilers of how many dead bodies will be walked over, you need to find out what is happening and why? Who would harm these divers? Absolute 5 star read, Highly recommend!

I’ve liked this author’s previous books, but this one was a slow burn and kind of confusing. I’m not sure if the characters weren’t fully developed or if I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the idea of saturation divers, but the story seemed to drag on until the very end.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC, in exchange for my honest opinion.

Published in the UK in June 2024; published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on August 6, 2024

This is a plot that crime fiction fans will likely have encountered before. A half dozen people have gathered in a remote area. One by one, they die of an unknown cause. If foul play is afoot, one of the group members is likely a murderer. Is the killer one of the survivors or did the butler do it?

The Chamber images that six deep-sea divers are housed in a diving bell. Because they are living at the bottom of the sea, they cannot leave. Bringing them back to the surface will take days because they need to decompress.

The divers (or at least some of them) die serially for no apparent reason. Their job requires them to be compulsive about hygiene, but is it possible that the atmosphere or their food supply is contaminated? Could someone outside the bell be poisoning them?

The details of saturation diving make The Chamber a thriller that reads like a horror novel. Will Dean conveys the fear, claustrophobia, exhilaration, and boredom of confinement in a cramped undersea chamber, breathing helium, anticipating a simple and last mistake, and enduring days of tedium when the chamber returns to its mother ship. All of this to keep the oil flowing. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose this occupation. Just reading about it makes me cringe.

The narrator is Ellen Brooke. She is the only woman on a team of divers working at the bottom of the North Sea. Each character has a personality, some more than others if only because some characters outlive others and thus spend more time in the reader’s company. Although all saturation divers are trained to respond to contingencies in the same way, each character has his (and her) own way of dealing with adversity. Their differing responses to a growing threat (including the degree to which they are willing to continue trusting each other rather than allowing order to break down entirely) contribute to the story’s realism.

The divers pass the time by telling funny or harrowing stories about other diving experiences, either commercially or in the military. Death is obviously on the characters’ minds — it would be even if they weren’t dying, one by one — and some of the most intense moments come as characters discuss the deaths of family and soldiers and co-workers. All the stories add flavor to the novel, but they also add meat to the characters.

Ellen misses her children when she accepts long contracts, to the point where she brings their towels with her so she can smell them. (I don’t understand the desire to smell kids. If they ever have a pleasant odor, I haven’t noticed.) In any event, although the money is good, I wondered why Ellen works in a dangerous occupation that makes her miserable by keeping her away from her kids for weeks at a time. To Will Dean’s credit, the novel eventually provides a convincing and surprising explanation of Ellen’s choice, one that will help the reader understand the underlying mystery.

With nearly a hundred people working on the mother ship, the list of potential suspects is long, assuming they are positioned to poison the divers’ food or drinks. The suspects that occur to Ellen include the supervisor (although he’s always been trustworthy), the night supervisor (less well liked), and the medic who sends down medications that never revive them after they pass out. None have an obvious motive, but neither do the other divers. After all, they’ve each saved the lives of the others repeatedly.

At the same time, Dean suggests that extreme environments (particularly the deep-sea confinement that causes “bubble brain”) might lead to extreme behaviors. The Chamber earns its status as a horror novel by making me contemplate a month in a bubble with five other people, one of whom might be a crazed killer.

Tension builds as divers die while their co-workers, both inside the bell and on the ship, are unable to protect or save them. Dean creates a solid mystery by delaying the reveal until after the action seems to have ended. The mystery’s resolution takes some effort to unravel. Dean plants suggestions that point in opposite directions until the reader thinks them through, yet enough ambiguity remains to encourage second-guessing. For the clever way in which Dean stretches an old plot into new dimensions and his masterful creation of characters and atmosphere, I give The Chamber a strong recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

3.5 stars rounded up. This was a really claustrophobic, fast-paced thriller. Given the setting, I'd say it really was one of the most claustrophobic books I've read.

Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the most interesting ones. I found all the technical parts hard to get through, even though they were explained well. The story does move along quickly though with short chapters. It kept me guessing until and even after the end. It was one of those books that left me wondering what just happened. In a good way.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

Wow, I felt like I was down there in that pressurized chamber along with the characters in The Chamber by Will Dean. This story just gets worse and worse, and what’s more intense than being locked in a small chamber deep under the sea?

I liked the plot, I get tired of the same tired plots being recycled. I have never read a novel like this one. The increased tension keeps the plot moving forward although a few parts of the book were a little boring for me, the characters reminiscing slowed the pace at times, but I am very impatient and my ADHD gets the best of me sometimes.

I found myself googling images so I could get a clear picture of what a chamber looks like and all I can say is NO THANKS.

The extreme research that went into this novel needs to be applauded. There were so many tiny details about the saturation diving experience that I imagine took months of research. Well done!

Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, 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.

With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?

The Chamber by Will Dean is a fun take on a locked room thriller/mystery. The Sat dive setting is very unique and I learned a lot about the profession by reading this book. You can tell the author put in a lot of effort into research about how to write accurately. The writing style did a great job conveying the tight living quarters and the anxiety of the situation. As far as the overall plot goes, I’d say while the build up was tense, it does get repetitive after a while, and the resolution kind of fizzled out. However, the ending really left me questioning what the real truth was and in the end I still don’t know who to believe. I felt there could’ve been more character development because I didn’t real care about the characters themselves, I just wanted to know what was going on in the vessel. Overall, I enjoyed this novel and ended up finishing it in less than a day. I’d recommend to those who enjoyed a locked in thriller with a unique setting. (4/5)
**This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Ellen is a SAT diver. She goes out on ships to rigs and then stays in a decompression chamber for weeks at a time to work on oil riggings deep in the ocean.

This dive is no different. She is the only woman diver with five men. On the first day, while she is down doing her work, she has a mishap that she is able to correct. It leaves her shaken but when she and her monitor come up to the chamber, they discover one of the bunk mates dead. This sets off a whole story of what happened and then more bunk mates meet with disaster. Is this someone within their chamber or is it from outside?

This is not the book for anyone that is claustrophobic. I enjoyed it, and read it very quickly as I needed to know what happened.

Thank you to @netgalley for this arc.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!!

I have not read any of this author's books before, but I appreciate the writing style! While this was not like my usual heart-pounding, seat-gripping thriller, I did get invested by the end. The author was helpful in including tid bits for specific diving terms prior to the beginning of the novel, and that was very handy. I felt fully enveloped with the crew and also taking each minute and hour in the chamber with them. The ending may or may not have me slightly confused still, but overall a good read.

This book has a super intriguing premise and I loved a lot about the setup: creepy and atmospheric deep-sea chamber housing saturation divers on a mission that goes wrong. Similar to why I love space books, I loved the detailed descriptions of the technology and equipment and how the main character had to meticulously solve each little (big) problem that came up. After a while we kind of deviated from those things that I love in a sciency thriller and moved into a mystery that became repetitive and way more focused on the other characters’ pasts than I was interested in. While I do appreciate that Will Dean likes his twists, this one (or two) didn’t surprise or hit me as much as I would have wanted in order to make the entire book feel worth the read. I’m sure I’ll keep picking up this author’s books in the future, because his unique settings and initial plots are intriguing enough to give a try, but this one definitely was not as much of a favorite as The Last One was.

I thought this book was okay. The beginning dragged for me with all of the technical information being shared. Towards the middle things got better, although time dragged for me much like it did for the characters. The ambiguous ending left me feeling unsatisfied.

THE CHAMBER by Will Dean is a psychological crime thriller/mystery with the ultimate locked room. Six experienced saturation divers begin to die, one-by-one, in their place of work, a hyperbaric chamber. If you are claustrophobic, this may not be the book for you, but you will be missing out on an amazing who-dun-it thriller that leaves you questioning your assumptions all the way to the last page.

Locked in a hyperbaric chamber is a tight and hot environment in which to live as six professional saturation divers work in shifts on deep sea oil rigs. They all depend on each other for their lives and know there is no exit until after decompression. After only one dive shift, one of the divers is discovered dead in his bunk and then it happens again. The divers can find no reason for these deaths and do not know who to trust. Now, as the company calls a halt to the month-long job, the divers must wait through four days of decompression as they continue to die one-by-one.

The story is told by Ellen Brooke, one of few female saturation divers, and she is in the chamber with five other experienced divers. Ellen is a wife and mother who does not know if she will return home. As the clock ticks down the time of decompression, the dead bodies increase and so does the level of suspicion and conspiracy theories. I always thought I was slightly claustrophobic until I read this book and now, I know I am much more claustrophobic than I believed. This is definitely not a job for the feint of heart.

I loved this book! I learned about a career I knew nothing about and would never attempt but found fascinating. I changed my mind so many times as to who or what was killing the divers. This mystery/thriller is fast paced, even with the explanations of sat diving and the countdown to the end builds to a heart pounding climax. No spoilers here, but make sure you read to the very last page.

I highly recommend this psychological crime thriller/mystery!

We love a book that opens with a diagram. I truly appreciated the combination of fiction with true science. It felt like everything was 100 percent plausible (a la, Michael Crichton or Andy Weir). It was very realistic in that sense. I truly did want to like this book, but it just lacked a level of charisma that made it uninteresting to me. Still, I think the tense and suspenseful scenes were very well done. Everything in between was a bit of a drag for me. The environmental setting of this book really helped adding to the sense of claustrophobia (again, quite well done). However, it was a bit of a double-edged sword, because there wasn’t much exploring going on. Turns out, there’s not really anything that interesting about being stuck in a metal chamber. I think this book has an audience out there. Those who enjoy the above-mentioned authors, or the more recently released Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes would probably enjoy this book.