Jeff’s Reviews > The Chamber > Status Update

In terms of authenticity, this book is pretty high quality. If a lunatic wrote a story, it would read like this. Coherence, satisfaction, logic--many qualities suffer--but the authenticity is undeniable.

“I am detaining you under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995..."

That's a verbal sentence, spoken out loud with parentheses and no "of" involved.

For about 20 chapters it's been all sealed-container, no contaminations paranoia, then suddenly this:

“Roger that,” says André, breathless. He gestures for me to pass him a cup of water.

I do as he asks.

?

“Fresh kits are on their way on the back of a bike,” says the Super. “Five minutes, I’m told. Over.”
Eighteen minutes.

They've been using the antidote kits for several chapters but just now they're inspecting them for the first time, with only 20 minutes left? And how would they replace them all in that time from a new "source"? And why would they need to?

Even the stakes seem to be mixed up in this book. Is she concerned about a murderer or about being stuck in the chamber? Is she suspicious or is she worried about survival? Does she think she's cracking up or does she suspect the other diver?

"These kits looks smart enough, and they might work well, but I want the ability to go straight to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary if the worst was to occur."

Much of the plot relies on characters telling fragments of stories about things they saw while diving, but they're completely absent of any context or introduction, so none of them really has any meaning within the larger story. Dean moves so abruptly from clipped dialogue with heavy subtext to these bizarre vignettes that the reader has no time to understand, much less assign meaning within the overall story.

Dean has demonstrated (in other books) that he can build psychological suspense into a cliffhanger chapter ending, but this is just disorienting nonsense:

I move my queen out in preparation for an attack.
“Brooke,” he says, looking up at me. “What is going on here?”

[Next chapter]

“If you’ve got something to say, say it out loud like a man.”
His lips part.
He moves his rook while looking right at me. “Checkmate.”

Even if the action weren't incredibly repetitive and limited mostly to stories about things happening elsewhere at other times, Dean seems to repeatedly forget that he's already explained something like "three hots and a cot," then balances that by making a completely obscure reference like "who's going to lift the boats and the logs?"

A significant amount of the tension in the plot results from characters telling stories about incidents more interesting than the one they're experiencing.