Published By: Hodder & Stoughton
Pages: 320
Released On: 06/06/2024
HIGH PRESSURE OUTSIDE
On a boat heading out into the North Sea, Ellen Brooke steels herself to spend almost a month locked inside a hyperbaric chamber with five other divers. They are all being paid handsomely for this work – to be lowered each day inside a diving bell to the sea bed, taking it in turns to dive down and repair oil pipes that lie in the dark waters. It is a close knit team and it has to be: any error or loss of trust could be catastrophic.
EXTREME PRESSURE INSIDE
All is going to plan until one of the divers is found unresponsive in his bunk. He hadn’t left the chamber. It will take four more days of decompression, locked away together, before the hatch can be opened. Four more days of bare steel, intrusive thoughts, and the constant struggle not to give way to panic. Mind games, exhaustion, suspicion, and, most of all, pressure. And if someone does unlock the door, everyone dies…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I first came to Will Dean in 2022 with First Born. I then read The Last Thing to Burn, followed by The Last Passenger, and was thrilled to get a copy of his newest book. Every now and again you find an author who was missing from your life and for me, Will Dean is that author. Whenever I read a book of his, I think it can’t possibly top the previous one, and yet it always does.
There is no hanging about in this book. Within 2-3% of the book we know our main players, the setting, the task. We get to know more about it as the story goes on, at the same time sometimes as the characters, which was exciting.
I know next to nothing about decompression chambers and whatnot, outside of what I’ve read in fictional books, but it all sounds so right that I’m assuming Will is either a secret deep-sea diver or his research is top notch.
Will is an expert at creating a sense of setting, weather, clothing, appearance. It’s full of detail but none of it seems extraneous or surplus. We can imagine each person very clearly in our heads, which makes it easier to become invested in the story. We can hear the birds calling above, smell the salty water, feel the pressure forcing down on you. And yet it never feels unreal. It’s all so frighteningly familiar, and yet distant.
I made the mistake of googling what would happen if the hatch was opened and the pressure changed, resulting in, most likely, immediate death. I advise you not to google it, or at least don’t google in images. That’s something no-one needs to see, but it did give me more of a sense of the importance of the job when reading it.
This one was slightly more niche than his other works. His previous books, whilst unlikely, contain scenes and situations that anyone could find themselves in. But this one is very specific to a few individuals which I found interesting, as I couldn’t immediately put myself in their shoes, which made for a different reading experience.
For a book set in one very small setting, it was full of twists and turns and secrets. The enclosed settings adds to the claustrophobic feeling the reader gets; it’s a very clever, and probably not easy, way of writing. For me, the thrill comes from this environment, from the claustrophobia, from the characters, rather than the plot. We start to question things like the characters do: who can we trust? Can we trust our colleagues, the outside crew, or even ourselves?
It is thrilling, fast-paced but not rushed, entertaining, frightening, tense, mad, emotional, heart-stopping, sad; it’s just absolutely everything and more.
Books By Your Bedside 