Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70821 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Synopsis
Something else had happened...Something so terrible that she was too frightened to search her memory for it...The newspapers reported the case with relish. Jane (Jinx) Kingsley, fashion photographer and heiress, tries to kill herself after being unceremoniously jilted by her fiance, who has since disappeared - together with Jinx's best friend Meg Harris...But when Jinx wakes from her coma, she can remember nothing about her alleged suicide attempt. With the help of Dr Alan Protheroe of the Nightingale Clinic, she slowly begins to piece together the fragments of the last few weeks. Then the memories begin to surface...memories of utter desperation and absolute terror. 'Violence may well be offered to anyone who tries to part you from this marvellous, dramatically intelligent novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity and a deep, unholy joy' - Frances Fyfield, "Daily Mail". 'Guaranteed to burn the midnight oil' - Mike Ripley, "Daily Telegraph".

Customer Reviews

Excellent plot but what a tedious read...
This is the second Minette Walters novel I have read, the other being The Shape of Snakes, and I got as little pleasure from this one as I did the first. Good points first: brilliant plotting, and, at one level, a gifted mind at work and a fast pace of action. The book held my attention sufficiently for me to finish the story to discover the perpetrator. But oh dear, the disappointment and tedium of the style and presentation...

I like to get right into the feelings, personalities and subconscious of the main players. I like to get to know the police officers, and victim's family (where applicable) and be able to see and feel what is happening from the chief protagonist's viewpoint. My usual feeling on reading a P D James or Ruth Rendell offering is huge admiration - and sadness at having to say 'goodbye' to characters whom I have got to know so well. I didn't feel I knew any of these 'people' who came over more as literary marionettes whom the author manipulated with admittedly consummate skill. Even worse, I did not care a fig for the described suffering of the players, and couldn't empathise with the 2 chief characters at any level.

I finished the book out of curiosity re the plot's culmination - and there were no farewells to be said. In fact I did not feel that the personalities had been portrayed convincingly enough for us even to have been introduced.

The chapters and sub-sections are in the main fairly short and there is minimum description of environment and character. Most of the individuals are hugely dysfunctional and the language almost universally overstrong for my taste. I think the main male character and the police officers (at least when interviewing suspects) were the only ones not to use frequent expletives as part of their everyday conversation.

In particular, I missed the setting within a timeframe and location with which I could felt an empathy. I sorely missed the great swathes of brilliantly and beautifully written narrative and character description one gets so bountifully from P D James; and the 'surreally' realistic character and atmosphere evocation typical of Ruth Rendell. I put the book down feeling thoroughly depressed and miserable, and I am unlikely to read another minette Walters novel.

Pretty Good Read
This was my first Minette Walters book and I will definately read more. I like her style of writing, not over-describing the actions/thoughts of the characters. You know, like.... ' She sat down in the leather chair and swept her long dark hair from her face wishing she was anywhere else'- that stuff makes me nuts!! I thought the book stuck to the point and each character was described with the minimum of fuss. Got a bit lost with the constant referral of dates, in the end I gave up trying to work out when or what did or was supposed to have happened. It didn't detract from the book anyhow. The ending was a surprise, guessed wrong!! The book is well worth a go.

Dark and sinister (warlockb@hotmail.com)
An early Walters, The Dark Room, is not her best work.
It is, however not a bad book,full of surprizes and turnings.

Surviving the suicide attempt, she wakes up in hospital, with only fractions left of her memories of the last few weeks.
People visit her and all seems to be alright, if it hadn't been for the terror she feels, trying to remember, giving her panic attacks and frightening both relatives and doctors..
Friends visit her and all agree that she is recovering, when she starts to talk about stalkers in the hospital grounds...
Surely this is just imaginations of a troubled mind..?

As she digs deeper into her memories, frightening things turn up and someone, someone bad, waits for the right opportunity to kill her..

I liked the book a lot, as it was full of surprises, it wasn't that easy to find out the thruth, which is good. A skilled writer makes you guess at just the right moment, not before or after.
Walters is such a skilled writer!