One of the somewhat infuriating things about reading Heart of Darkness is Marlow's nonlinear storytelling. For the most part he sticks to chronological order, but then, out of nowhere, he'll skip to the end. Sometimes it seems to make the story far less suspenseful. Right from the beginning, we know that Marlow's going to make it out of the Congo alive and in one piece, as he's telling the story later, so when the ship gets attacked there isn't much sense of real danger (even though the helmsman dies, but even though it upsets Marlow to the reader he's really not a large character.) The most suspenseful thing throughout the book is Kurtz, and even then Marlow jumps ahead in the story and tells us that he does meet Kurtz, and plenty of other things about him besides ("My Intended", the pamphlet.) On the other hand, telling us about Kurtz is one of the few things that keeps the suspense going. When it seems like nothing is happening while the boat is being repaired, and later when they're taking months just to go down the river, Marlow dangles the prospect of Mysterious Mr. Kurtz to keep the story from stalling. And while the bits about Kurtz on one hand seem to be revealing a lot before we even meet him, they're also designed to be really weird and make him even stranger, which is what is creating the suspense in the first place (when will we finally meet this guy?)
Marlow's narration style requires a lot of careful distribution of information to keep the story suspenseful. I'm not entirely convinced it's working.
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