"Channels the moody intensity of Raymond Chandler's crime fiction."--Washington Post

Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide inspector, is at an exhumation when his phone rings. The mayor is being blackmailed and has ordered Cain back to the city; a helicopter is on its way. The casket, and Cain's cold-case investigation, must wait.
At City Hall, the mayor shows Cain four photographs he's received: the first, an unforgettable blonde; the second, pills and handcuffs on a nightstand; the third, the woman drinking from a flask; and last, the woman naked, unconscious, and shackled to a bed. The accompanying letter is straightforward: worse revelations will come unless the mayor takes his own life first.
An "electrifying noir thriller,"* The Dark Room tracks Cain as he hunts for the blackmailer, pitching him into the web of destruction and devotion the mayor casts in his shadow.

"With an Edgar Allan Poe feel to it, this book leaves an uncomfortable, indelible impression . . . San Francisco has never been so menacing."--Kirkus, starred review

*Booklist, starred review