The Darkest Room

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin is the first of the three books I brought at the recent Kingston Killers event, I saw Theorin speak and he seemed very passionate about his books.

A Swedish Number One Bestseller, The Darkest Room is set on and around Eel Point on Oland, an island of the Swedish coast. A young family moves to Eel Point, a set of two lighthouses and an old manor house and outbuildings. Eel Point has had a tragic past, built from the spoils of a ship wreck, deaths litter the building’s history and as each person dies, the remaining occupants of the house go into the barn on the estate and carve the deceased name on the barn wall. Part ghost story, part crime thriller, tragedy soon hits the latest occupants of house, the story leads to an explosive climax as Christmas approaches and at the height of a blizzard, tieing all the seemingly disparate strands together.

This book is beautifully, almost cinematically written, you can almost sense the camera angles so to speak, the beautiful, windswept landscape, the cold, you almost feel like you’re stumbling around in the snow yourself, I highly recommend it, a perfect book for this time of year.