The Sanatorium - Sarah Pearse

Horror/Thriller

Rating: 7.5/10

While many of us are trapped within our own four walls, a book that can pluck you up and show you just how much worse it could get might be exactly what the book doctor ordered!

With the success of the film Knives Out a year or so ago, the literary world saw a clamoring for the resurrection of the locked room mystery.  However, unlike the permutations available in the domestic thriller category that blew up with the release of Gone Girl, there aren’t as many directions to explore here.  By its very definition, a locked room is a confined and contained space that writers have to somehow find ways to differentiate.  And some do an exemplary job; a remote gas station in a storm, a restaurant party room, a condominium building; but many default to the trope of the holiday locale, lodges and hotels being the most popular.

Despite the seemingly innocuous location of a revamped hotel which was once a hospital, all kinds of red flags there, this story was able to stand apart. A detective on leave finds herself lured back into the world of crime when a murder takes place in the hotel in the middle of an avalanche that has closed them all off from the outside world. The authors writing is tense and atmospheric, both of which ensure that the reader feels the sensation of claustrophobia that is an integral element of this niche category. Add to that a creepy gothic vibe and compelling characters and your all set.

Footnote: Through the first three quarters of this book, I was sure I would be rating it and eight or above.  It fell a bit short upon the revealing of the killer’s motivation.  It was a bit convoluted and not nearly as sinister as the book would have had you believe up until that point.