The Chamber by Will Dean

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.

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The Best Lies by David Ellis

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 23, 2024

Leo Balanoff has a younger brother named Trace. They were raised by a mother who purchased them after she inadvertently killed her own children. She was a decent if overprotective mother to her stolen children, although Leo eventually came to doubt her claim that they needed to keep moving because someone was trying to kill them.

Leo’s college life had a little hiccup when he apparently committed a felony assault by punching a cop. The circumstances surrounding the hiccup are revealed as the story unfolds.

In college, Leo became involved with Andi Piotrowski, who planned to become a cop so she could take down human traffickers like the one who sold Trace and Leo. They’ve been apart for five years, but Leo is disappointed to learn that she quit her law enforcement job and is providing private security for a medical research business.

Leo is now a lawyer, although his license was suspended for five years because he induced a guilty man’s confession to save his innocent client by pretending to be an FBI agent. One of the quirks of our criminal justice system is that FBI agents can pretend to be anyone without consequence but pretending to be an FBI agent is a crime. In an effort to save his license, Leo’s law firm arranged for a mental health evaluation that proclaimed Leo to be a pathological liar. Why they thought that would help is beyond me.

As the novel begins, Leo is facing a trial for murdering Cyrus Balik. The evidence against Leo seems solid: his fingerprints on the murder weapon, his blood on the victim’s sleeve. The reader will wonder how Leo is going to get out of this mess.

Most of the novel tells Leo’s backstory. Leo was representing Bonnie Tessler as a cooperating witness against Cyrus. A few weeks after Leo and Bonnie have confidential meetings with the FBI and local law enforcement authorities, Bonnie dies from a drug overdose. Leo believes Bonnie was murdered. He views Cyrus as the logical suspect but wonders how Cyrus learned that Bonnie was cooperating against him.

Leo has more than one reason to regard Cyrus as worthy of vengeance. Leo’s connections to Bonnie and Cyrus are revealed as the story unfolds.

Shortly after Cyrus dies, Leo is drawn into a criminal plot orchestrated by Nico Katsaros. Leo’s connections to Nico are revealed as the story unfolds.

The crime involves industrial espionage for China’s secret police. Chris Roberti is an FBI agent who earns extra income by helping a spy for China. Chris introduces the spy to Nico. Andi has access to plans for technology that the Chinese government would love to acquire. By threatening to expose evidence that Leo committed a murder, Nico induces Leo to act as a courier, ferrying the plans from Andi to the Chinese spy. The criminal plot doesn’t go as planned, in part because Leo’s adversaries underestimate his intelligence.

David Ellis constructed the story brick by brick, each new row adding facts that illuminate or belie facts that form the novel’s foundation. By the novel’s last act, several characters have a motive to murder Leo. Other characters are not who they seem to be. Mistaken identity subplots abound. Good guys cannot easily be distinguished from bad guys.

David Ellis invites the reader to reevaluate the story and its characters after each plot development. My only complaint is that Ellis continues to lay long rows of bricks late in the story, after key plot points are resolved, extending the book by a significant length when abbreviated scenes would have hastened the story to its conclusion. I nevertheless appreciated the plot structure, the strong storytelling, and the intriguing characters.

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The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Published by Viking on July 16, 2024

The Bright Sword takes place at the end of the time of magic. King Arthur is believed to be dead. Without his guidance, Britain is changing. Change is irreversible, but the future can be shaped. The few remaining knights of the Round Table feel a duty to choose Arthur’s successor and to defend Camelot from attack by lesser kings.

After the battle in which Arthur was lost, the Round Table is 94 knights short of a quorum. Having failed to save Arthur, Lancelot is living in a monastery, where he plans to spend his life in total seclusion. He is trying to atone for his many sins. Canoodling with Queen Guinevere seems to be high on that list.

The rollicking story begins with and focuses upon young Callum, who journeys to Camelot with a plan to beg Arthur for a position as a knight at the Round Table. Callum acquits himself in an unexpected encounter with a knight as he travels to Camelot. The knight’s identity, when finally revealed, fits well within the tradition of Arthurian tales.

Callum is dismayed to learn of Arthur’s death. The surviving knights seem to have lost their purpose. Britain has been forced into an early version of Brexit by the loss of its unifying force. Competing claims for the throne distress the knights, who aren’t used to making nakedly political decisions.

After winning a challenge, Callum is invited to join the group and to undertake new quests that will eventually determine Britain’s leadership. Adventures ensue, including encounters with magicians, giants, gods, the Lady of the Lake, and other characters drawn from Arthurian legend. From jousting competitions to farmers armed with pitchforks running across a field toward knights in armor, Lev Grossman assures that action scenes will keep the story from dragging. Yet the novel’s real interest lies more in its characters than in their adventures.

Backstories occupy much of the plot. We learn how Callum acquired the skills of a knight when he wasn’t being abused by his employer. We learn about the eventful lives of Sir Bedivere, Sir Dinadan, Sir Dagonet, Sir Constantin, and Sir Scipio. Gawain plays a small role in the story, but it’s appropriate for some of the lesser knights to enter the spotlight.

The knights were a diverse bunch. Bedivere’s physical longing for Arthur explains his loyalty. We hear less about the well-known past of Sir Lancelot, but we see him in the present, where living up to his legend proves to be his greatest challenge.

We don’t hear much about Merlin’s past but he plays a key role, often in battle with his former apprentice, Nimue. The story’s gossipy style exposes Nimue’s plan to seduce one of the knights. Whether she needed the assist of magic is not quite clear, even to Nimue.

The most interesting backstory belongs to Sir Palomides. The former prince of Baghdad is more intellectual than the other knights. Still, he found the struggle between Islam and Christianity to be less troublesome than his struggle for the love of Isolde.

By the end, most characters are transformed by adventures that expose them to miracles and force them to do (or attempt) great deeds. Just when it seems that their lives will normalize, along comes another invasion. That’s British history in a nutshell. “Change is the only certainty.” That’s also the ultimate lesson that the reader — like each character — is invited to internalize.

Yet the novel’s most profound question is one a knight contemplates in the moments before his death: “why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.” In that respect, the world of Arthur parallels and continues to illuminate the modern world.

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Desperation Reef by T. Jefferson Parker

Published by Forge Books on July 16, 2024

Jen Stonebreaker married a surfing fanatic and became one herself. Her husband John died while surfing a Big Wave at Mavericks. Jen had been towing his board into the waves on a jet ski. She blames herself for not doing more to save him, but there was really nothing more she could have done. Unless there was.

Casey and Brock were born almost nine months later. They are now in their early twenties. They are twins but, apart from their love of surfing, are very different men. Casey is religious in a conventional way. Brock started his own church and invented his own god. He calls the church and its god Breath of Life. Brock also founded the Go Dogs, a volunteer organization that helps people survive fires and other natural disasters.

Brock is opposed by a group of far-right activists who believe he is a heathen because he doesn’t share their intolerance. The threat of a violent confrontation between the groups provides a tense undercurrent to the story.

Casey believes in turning the other cheek. Brock volunteered to fight in Ukraine and believes in vengeance. Both believe in the possibility of bringing people together. Forgiveness and letting go of grievances are the novel’s dominant themes.

Casey catches blue fin tuna for his mother’s successful restaurant in Laguna. He makes an enemy of the Wu family when he takes a video of their illegal enterprise of cutting the fins from sharks before dumping the de-finned sharks back into the sea. He starts a small-scale war when he posts the video to his blog. This leads to the kidnapping of his dog, a ransom demand, Brock’s intervention, and threats against his family. Whether the Wu crime family will make good on those threats is one of the novel’s mysteries.

Casey is a decent person and a terrific surfer but only his mother tells him he’s smart until Bette Wu compliments his intelligence. Bette convinces him that she doesn’t share her family’s passion for crime. The fact that she’s hot sways Casey’s opinion of her, although his mother and brother retain their skepticism, as will the reader. Bette claims she wants to have Casey’s baby, but it will be difficult for anyone to trust Bette.

The Wu crime family plot is credible but unexciting. The subplot involving Brock’s encounters with far-right troublemakers is less believable but it adds action to the story. Characters have just enough personality to carry the story in between action scenes, although Casey's relationship with Bette Wu is unconvincing.

The novel’s competitive surfing scenes are its strength. Intense descriptions of riding 50-foot waves and struggling to escape the pounding water after a wipeout offer more thrills than the crime story or the clash between Brock and the rednecks. I don’t follow competitive surfing, but the novel obviously benefitted from careful research. Readers don't need to be surfing enthusiasts to enjoy the vicarious excitement of riding Big Waves.

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Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe

Published in Japan in 2006; published in translation by Pushkin Press on July 2, 2024

Kazushige Abe’s 2006 novel tells the story of a teenage girl who finds meaning in her brief life that she was denied when she realized she would never be a troubadour. Shiori had her heart set on being a troubadour ever since she looked up the word and decided that it described the life she wanted to live. It turned out to be a poor choice for a girl who is tone deaf and afraid to compose lyrics that don’t capture her true emotions as fully as the sounds that her audiences interpret as screeches. Maybe she's a young Yoko Ono.

The narrator learns Shiori’s story from an old man in a park. The narrator returns repeatedly until the old man brings the story to a resolution.

Shiori was tormented by her older sister’s brutal honesty. Her sister recognized that Shiori’s first boyfriend was only with her because she paid for his CDs when they went shopping.

Shiori shopped for cat food at a pet store. She became captivated by the parakeets. The birds seemed to be upset by her singing, although Shiori thought they were encouraging her. Shiori blames herself when things do not go well for Japanese birds.

Shiori makes no friends at music school (she refuses to sing or to compose lyrics) so she begins to correspond with random pen pals. One is a Peruvian drummer who invites her to hear his band. The other band members quickly realize that they can take advantage of Shiori’s generous and gullible nature. The Peruvian takes the story in a different direction when he entrusts Shiori with a suitcase nuke — or maybe it’s just a suitcase.

Shiori is a lonely teen who has no talent for making friends. Even her family abandons her. But Shiori is true to herself. While the inclinations to which she is true might be unwise, Shiori will win hearts for standing her ground.

Mysterious Setting is odd and unpredictable, qualities that make the story a pleasure to read. Shiori is initially incapable of recognizing her faults and then is unable to stop blaming herself for them. There’s some of that in most of us, although Shiori’s tendency to take those qualities to an extreme generates the story’s dark humor.

The end of the old man’s story tests the boundaries of plausibility, but this isn’t a story the reader is meant to believe. Absurd situations fuel its humor while the dark ending makes Shiori even more likable.

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