#Bookreview of THE REVELATION ROOM by Mark Tilbury

#Bookreview of THE REVELATION ROOM by Mark Tilbury

BLURB:

The Revelation Room – The first in a new series of gripping psychological crime thrillers written with occasional flashes of dark humor.

Edward Ebb had learned long ago that the truth was best extracted by time and torture. You could set your clock by that.

Whilst searching for a missing girl, private investigator Geoff Whittle is kidnapped by a highly dangerous cult. Close to death, he makes a desperate call to his son, Ben, asking for help. He tells Ben not to call the police because “everyone will die”. Haunted by the phone call and terrified by what they might find, Ben and his friend, Maddie, track down one of the cult members spreading the word in Oxford city centre. They soon realise that their only option is to join the cult and rescue Ben’s father from the inside.

But the Sons and Daughters of Salvation are a group of unhinged, brainwashed people living under the spell of evil psychopath, Edward Ebb. When Ben and Maddie are initiated into the group, they pass into a world where only two choices exist: compliance or death. The odds are impossibly stacked against them and they are about to discover the gruesome secret locked away in the Revelation Room.

MY REVIEW:

I’ve seen a lot of positive buzz about this book so I was looking forward to reading it.  I was not disappointed.  Benjamin and Madeline, sorry, Ben and Maddie, are the furthest thing from the Dynamic Duo, but when Ben receives an urgent, dropped phone call from his father, they have no option but to try and find him.  If they find him, will he still be alive?

Ben’s father, Geoff Whittle, was tracking down a young girl named Emily Hunt who’d taken up with a cult.  As Ben and Maddie follow the scant clues, they realize the only way to find and save his father, is to join the cult.  Boy,did they bite off more than they could chew. 

Edward Ebb, the cult leader, is one of those characters you just LOVE to hate.  Mark Tilbury paints him in such rich detail, that you can easily see the crazy in crazy.  In some ways, I felt Ebb was more fleshed out than our unlikely hero, Ben.  There were a few times I found myself flicking through the pages as fast as I could as Maddie and Ben each faced their own indoctrinations.  

Several reviews mentioned that Mark writes with a different voice, and he does.  It did take a while for me to get used to his writing style, especially all the metaphors.  I’m not a fan of the overuse of metaphors, and they did have the tendency to kick me out of the story on more than one occasion.  The book has also been tagged as a dark comedy.  Maybe it’s the difference between British and American humor, but I really didn’t find anything funny in the story. 

Regardless, I really enjoyed this story and I’m definitely going to read the sequel.  If you love dark, twisted, psychologically thrillers, this book is for you.  I give it 4 feathers.

To read your copy today, click on the cover below: