Book Review. "DARKROOM" by POPPET

  DARKROOM
                                                                          By
                                                                      Poppet

DUE FOR RELEASE OCTOBER 2010.

From the moment this book opens the writer has you hooked…the fear is almost overwhelming as you share the horror of capture and deprivation of liberty with our central female character Shauna.




Shauna the captive of a physchopath ... who has killed before.


The torture and deprivation of sight and sound, the mind control techniques used to break the strongest of men are repeated over and over again.


Meet Vengeance...the master, the angel of Shauna’s present and future. His sickness engulfs him as he watches Shauna sleeping…always in white Satin and bound with ribbons…Shauna hears him, smells him, fears him…her mind bends yet doesn’t break.


Months pass in drugged out pain and delirium.  Shauna is found in an alley. Dressed in nothing but a white silk slip and wearing a dirty angel tattoo with angels wings forming a V on the base of her spine…Branded for life, or death?


Her parents don’t believe her ramblings, the track marks under her fingernails and toes the only indication that they have to work on; they draw the conclusion that she has been prostituting herself in the months she’s been missing.


Shauna tells them all she remembers; she is not believed and in consequence she is hospitalized and treated as delusional.


Finally released from hospital she begins to doubt her own sanity…was it all real? Was “Vengeance” the psychopath real…the pain, the torture? Any of it?


She moves to NYC and two weeks later receives a card ... “Protecting you Angel”
In terror she moves to Alabama; within weeks the white roses and the card arrive, Melbourne, Surrey, Shauna runs. Vengeance finds her every time.


Finally she flees to South Africa…where she isolates herself completely. Groceries ordered online and delivered. She speaks to no one except her mother on the telephone.


He is there with her in the apartment, watching every move she makes. Cameras installed in all the rooms capture her moods and desires…her loneliness and paranoia…and her fear.


A neighbor knocks on her door offering friendship…Victor is a surgeon and a photographer, they exchange polite words … he returns with a purchase of eggs for Shauna whilst she is on the phone with her mother reluctantly bowing to pressue she accepts a blind date. She allows Victor inside to wait as she finishes her call.


The watcher is watching …


Shauna leaves for her date and is followed..She drinks too much and her date drives her home, they have sex under the watchful eyes of the cameras. Her date, John, leaves, and Shauna stands waving goodbye from her balcony. Victor is also on his balcony, taking the night air, they exchange brief pleasantries and then watch in horror as John’s car explodes and he is incinerated.


Shauna goes into shock and the good Dr.Victor is right there to sedate her and help her through the trauma.


While she is unconscious he goes into her apartment and checks her emails and phone messages. She has a friend arriving to stay for a week.


Sarah her friend and Shauna indulge themselves with girl play only to be interrupted. Drunk and nearly naked the girls answer the door.


Victor has flash backs to his childhood, in his fury over what he sees as Shauna’s betrayal he seeks out a bar..a pretty young girl takes a fancy to him despite his apparent disinterest, he goes back to her home where he ties her to the bed and surgically removes her breast implants before choking her on them.


Sara and Shauna double date.


Shauna gets drunk again and she and her date have sex..she has a panic attack when he calls her “Dirty Angel” thinking he is Vengeance…He leaves in disgust telling her she’s screwed in the head. Is she?


She had forgotten about the tattoo on her spine. She drinks herself to sleep only to be awoken by Sara…


Shauna’s date from the night before had committed suicide and left a note.


Vengeance enters her room while she sleeps. Dousing her with petrol and holding a flame close. Shauna is terrified and thinks she is about to die as he runs a blade over her.


He leaves as suddenly as he arrived, Shauna fears that Victor, her newfound and protective friend, is in danger, she runs to warn him.


Someone else is watching what is happening in her apartment. Have they hacked into the feed that Vengeance has set up?


Victor the protector does everything just right. Shauna is showered and drugged with Rohyphnol …she sleeps next to him and he takes what he believes is his to own.


The Author leads us through the views of both Victor and Shauna.


His will must be obeyed. He damages her deliberately under the guise of teaching her how to defend herself, relishing his ability to control her mind and make her grateful for the pain.


She is angry…afraid and succumbs to his mind control.


He begins to make her totally dependent on him…utterly at his mercy.


All the while the watcher watches.


The story grips you tightly never letting up for a moment.


Relentlessly fast paced, and mind numbingly provocative, the author takes you into the mind of the psychopath..the murderer.


You share Shauna’s thoughts and fears as each relate the accounts through their own perspectives. Beautifully and adeptly handled. This requires a subtle pen, the author utilizes the craft to perfection.


Is Victor beginning to feel anything apart from his desire to own Shauna completely? Is his only desire to dominate and impregnate her?


Shauna is weary, stressed out and in need of space.


She wants to spend some time in her own apartment.


Victor/Vengeance must extract punishment how dare she want to be away from him.


The retaliation is brutal.


Victor is stunned by the damage he has caused, revolted at his own brutality. He nurses Shauna back to health.


The watcher is watching…


The authors insights into the workings of the psychopathic mind are brilliantly researched.


The detailed plotting; the carefully constructed storyline, with hints planted…not giving away the plot, but clever and convincing on review.


Poppet Author, weaves a spell of intrigue…the plot twists and squirms in the readers mind.


The ending would be ruined if I go further…it is a shattering conclusion…or should I say conclusions.


I rate a book not only on its plot. I look at the research undertaken to be convincing in its structure.


I look closely at the characterizations, and the dialogue. The descriptive element is important of course; however I look primarily at the authors  ability to keep me enthralled and turning those pages.


Let me say as a reviewer I am awed at the detailed, clever and un-put-downable writing that this author presents.


This is a psychological thriller of enormous integrity and as such a credit to the craft of storytelling.


A testament to how good this is… it’s 3:15 A.M as I finish this review.


Buy it…read it…rest assured you will not forget it.


I rate this unhesitatingly as a five out of five book.







1-Don't Bother

 



2-So So

3-Good

4-Excellent

5-YES!!
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