About the Author
Mary Maddox is a suspense, horror, and dark fantasy novelist with what The Charleston Times-Courier calls a “Ray Bradbury-like gift for deft, deep-shadowed description.” Born in Soldiers Summit, high in the mountains of Utah, Maddox graduated with honors in creative writing from Knox College, and went on to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She taught writing at Eastern Illinois University and has published stories in various journals, including Yellow Silk, Farmer’s Market, The Scream Online, and Huffington Post. The Illinois Arts Council has honored her fiction with a Literary Award and an Artist’s Grant.
Connect with Mary at ancientchildren.com or on Facebook, and with @Dreambeast7 (Mary) and @novelpublicity on Twitter.
About the book
Talented but unstable photographer Day Randall has been living rent-free in Kelly Durrell’s Colorado condo for eight months. Day needs someone to keep an eye on her. Kelly needs someone to draw her out of her stable but not spectacular life . The arrangement works for both of them.
Then Kelly comes home one day to find Day gone. There’s no note, no phone call. Day’s car is still parked out front, but her room is starkly, suspiciously spotless.
No one seems to care. The police certainly aren't interested in a missing bipolar artist, but Kelly knows something is wrong. Day wouldn't just leave.
Alone, Kelly traces Day’s last steps through shadowy back rooms of Boulder nightclubs and to a remote mountain estate, where the wealthy protect themselves behind electric fences and armed guards. Along the way, she uncovers a sinister underworld lying just below the mountain snow, and a group of powerful people who will do anything to protect the secrets hidden in Day’s enigmatic photographs.
If she trusts the wrong person, Kelly herself will be the next to disappear.
Review
It has a grungy True Detective feel to it. A 70's vibe of grimy truth about the reality of a carefree, drug and sex fuelled lifestyles.
Kelly doesn't exactly agree with her friend Day's choices, but she is willing to put up with them. Why? Because there is something about Day that makes it and her worth the bother. She has a keen sense of justice and her art speaks volumes about how much she sees. Her photographs are windows into the souls of the subjects.
Day stumbles upon a possible crime and ends up disappearing into thin air. When Kelly returns from a business trip she finds Day gone and all evidence of her existence stripped and cleansed from Kelly's home.Thus begins a dangerous cat and mouse game to retrieve clues and evidence Day has scattered around town.
Maddox has a clear fresh voice with an eye for detail and a very specific tone. Her writing has a way of questioning whether the reader is paying attention. Are you listening? Did you get that? Hey we changed direction are you still with me? All without leaving her characters and plot to the side.
Maddox needs to keep up feisty noirish quality she has in the beginning and take it all the way to the end. I also enjoyed the way she wasn't at all bothered with the usual candy-floss notion of despair and upset when it came to Day. The what and where isn't important, actually her fate isn't really important either. It is more about the how and why of Day ending up in this particular situation.
In Darkroom the boundaries between the good guys and bad guys are skewed. Even the really bad can make the right choices sometimes.
Buy Darkroom at Amazon UK, Amazon com or go to Goodreads for any other retailer.
Enter the giveaway below to win a paperback bundle of Talion and Daemon by Maddox.
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