The Dark Room

A San Francisco cop investigates a chilling case of blackmail tied to City Hall in this “electrifying noir thriller” (Booklist, starred review).

Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide inspector, is at an exhumation when his phone rings. The mayor is being blackmailed and has ordered Cain back to the city; a helicopter is on its way. The casket, and Cain’s cold-case investigation, must wait.

At City Hall, the mayor shows Cain four photographs he’s received: the first, an unforgettable blonde; the second, pills and handcuffs on a nightstand; the third, the woman drinking from a flask; and last, the woman naked, unconscious, and shackled to a bed. The accompanying letter is straightforward: worse revelations will come unless the mayor takes his own life first.

As Cain begins his hunt for the blackmailer, he launches himself into the web of destruction and devotion the mayor casts in his shadow.

Praise for The Dark Room

“Suspense that never stops. If you like Michael Connelly’s novels, you will gobble up Jonathan Moore’s The Dark Room.” —James Patterson

“Channels the moody intensity of Raymond Chandler’s crime fiction.” —Washington Post

“Moody and macabre with an Edgar Allan Poe feel to it. . . . San Francisco has never been so menacing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“It is one of those rare books of such quality on every level that one is immediately prompted to catch up on the author’s backlist, regardless of whether or not you habitually read mysteries and thrillers.” —Bookreporter.com