ONE BY ONE a Chilling Murder Mystery

 One By One by Ruth Ware is a gripping murder puzzle with the classic Agatha Christie set-up of a group of clashing characters trapped together in an isolated setting, and one of them is a killer.

The setting is a vacation chalet high up in the snowy French Alps. Eight team members from a popular social media app company are at the chalet for a retreat. Tensions flare over a surprise offer to sell the company's app property. Some people there will make a lot of money from the offer. Some will instead just lose their jobs.

When a sudden avalanche slams into the chalet, everyone is trapped inside, cut off from outside help. Then the deaths begin to occur, one by one.

The plot unfolds in alternating first person chapters as seen from the viewpoints of two main characters: Erin, a hostess employed at the chalet, and Liz, a low level personal assistant with the company. As the two women narrate their thoughts, pieces of the murder puzzle slowly come together.

Careful readers may begin to pick up tell-tale clues and spot the killer before the he/she is unmasked. One complaint with the plot is the withholding of key information by the author, and some readers may feel misled on that account.

Nonetheless, One By One is an addictive read with a nail biting climax and Ruth Ware fans should be well entertained by the book.

Ruth Ware's new Suspense Novel Is a Sinister Enigma

The Turn of a Key is the latest novel by popular Psychological Suspense author Ruth Ware. This new offering is an ambiguous one. The novel has jarring narration and plot twists which may leave many readers uncertain, depending on how they interpret the final pages.

The opening story setup is promising. Rowan Caine takes what seems a cushy, high paying job as a family nanny in a remote manor house in the Scottish Highlands. But troubles for Rowan begin almost immediately. The parents must leave on a work assignment in Europe. The three small children left with Rowan are an unruly handful. Then there's the house itself, which seems to have a sinister presence about it.

There are faint echoes of the Henry James classic The Turn of the Screw. The children whisper vaguely about ghosts somewhere. The novel works overtime to build Gothic creepiness, from phantom footsteps in the night to an ominous locked door.

The structure of the novel has the story narrated by Rowan in letters to an attorney as she is being held in jail after a death in the house. But the plot takes a wrenching turn in the last third when vital new information is suddenly given to the reader that has been withheld from the beginning. Talk about an unreliable narrator! Things turn even more upside down at the conclusion when more new revelations make the reader question the validity of the entire prior narrative.

The Turn of a Key is a psychological enigma which offers one direct answer at the end. But is it the right answer?

Ruth Ware is Back With THE DEATH OF MRS. WESTAWAY

The Death of Mrs. Westaway is a new psychological mystery by Ruth Ware, author of previous best sellers In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin Ten.

The main character of the new novel is Harriet Westaway, nicknamed Hal, a young woman who ekes out a living as a Tarot reader on the Brighton Pier. Hal gets a surprising letter naming her as an heir of a deceased grandmother. But Hal immediately realizes it's a mistake, the dead woman was not her grandmother. Yet Hal is in debt and desperate, so she makes a risky decision to try to claim whatever the inheritance is.

She travels to Cornwall to the Westaway family estate of Trepassen. There she meets the brothers Harding, Able, and Ezra, along with the aged and hostile housekeeper Mrs. Warren. Hal must pass herself off as the daughter of a sister, Maud Westaway, who went missing years earlier. Hal's appearance as an unknown heir is a shock to the suspicious family members.

As Hal continues her deception, she learns more and more about Westaway family secrets long buried. But someone doesn't want those secrets exposed and Hal finds she has stepped into a dangerous trap.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway is not Ruth Ware's best work. The novel is a slow-tempo read, with far too much of Hal's swirling interior thoughts clogging the plot. The frenzied climax stains credulity with its questionable motivations of a key character.