THE DARK ROOM

A reporter who buys undeveloped rolls of film online gets the shock of his life when he develops his latest purchase.

It’s already horrifying that one of the photos Leonard Blaylock has bought shows a woman who’s been stabbed to death. What makes it much worse is that Leonard recognizes the woman as a bar pickup he’d left for dead five years ago. His meeting with that woman, whom he’d known only as Red, ended with her collapsing in the bathroom of her apartment after he’d persuaded her to try some cocaine to get her in the mood. After fleeing the scene, he’d been panting with gratitude that the police knew nothing about him when his fiancee, radio and TV host Caroline Cooper, abruptly called off their engagement, sent him packing, and married someone else. Now, confronted with evidence that Red waited five years to die, Leonard swings into action to figure out what really happened the night his life went sideways, and why. Joining forces with Martha Weaver, a photographer who shares his odd hobby, he identifies Red not as Erin Hayward, whose funeral he checked out thinking it was hers, but as Anna Bianco, who worked as a honeytrap for Ron Kincaid, a professional photographer with a profitable sideline in choreographing and documenting adulterous scenarios for suspicious romantic partners. Cutting briskly between past and present and among different characters’ viewpoints, Gray exploits every possible angle of her irresistible hook before bringing down the curtain.

Revenge piled on revenge, all of it served ice cold.