Darkroom - Kelly Durrell, #1

Kelly's search for a missing friend draws her into a sinister underworld.

Talented but unstable photographer Day Randall has been living rent-free in Kelly Durrell's Colorado condo for eight months. Day needs someone to keep an eye on her. Kelly needs someone to draw her out of her stable but not spectacular life. The arrangement works for both of them.

Then Kelly comes home one day to find Day gone. There's no note, no phone call. Day's car is still parked out front, but her room is starkly, suspiciously spotless.

No one seems to care. The police certainly aren't interested in a missing bipolar artist, but Kelly knows something is wrong. Day wouldn't just leave.

Alone, Kelly traces Day's last steps through shadowy back rooms of Boulder nightclubs and to a remote mountain estate, where the wealthy protect themselves behind electric fences and armed guards. Along the way, she uncovers a sinister underworld lying just below the mountain snow, and a group of powerful people who will do anything to protect the secrets hidden in Day's enigmatic photographs.

If she trusts the wrong person, Kelly herself will be the next to disappear.

If you like suspenseful thrillers with unexpected plot twists, a strong sense of place, and characters that one reader describes as "so well-drawn you'd swear they were relatives," you'll love Mary Maddox's dark, compelling novel.

A Night Owl Reviews Top Pick: "Sensational!...A haunting novel full of suspense and not a little terror."

Hailed by BestThrillers.com as "one of the year's best crime thrillers."