{"id":1731,"date":"2015-07-18T11:12:50","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T18:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2015-07-18T11:12:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T18:12:50","slug":"ruth-ware-in-a-dark-dark-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ruth-ware-in-a-dark-dark-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Ware: In a Dark, Dark Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"in-a-dark-dark-wood\"<\/a>This is the first novel by Brit Ruth Ware, and it\u2019s that rare thriller that is also a mystery. In a straight thriller, you may know whodunnit, and the thrill is catching or finding that person in time. But combining the best parts of the thriller\u2014pacing, suspense\u2014with the best parts of a mystery\u2014whodunnit?\u2014is a rarer skill. It\u2019s shared by such writers as Jeffery Deaver and Lee Child. Heady stuff for a first timer.<\/p>\n

This is a completely gripping story\u2014I read it straight through in one sitting, just about\u2014and you won\u2019t forget it anytime soon. The central character is Nora, who lives alone in a London flat. She\u2019s contacted out of the blue by someone named Flo who is throwing a bachelorette party (or in Brit lingo, a \u201cHen Do\u201d) for Clare, Nora\u2019s childhood best friend who she hasn\u2019t seen in a decade.<\/p>\n

As the book opens Nora is running through the woods, and then wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what has happened. Piecing it together is the book\u2019s narrative arc, and as Nora starts to remember, the reader gets a clearer picture of what transpired at what sounds like the world\u2019s most uncomfortable house party.<\/p>\n

For starters the bride is marrying an old friend, James. There\u2019s something between Nora and James, something the reader isn\u2019t privy to until the end of the novel, but it seems clear Clare was afraid to tell Nora who she was marrying. As the disparate group gets to know each other\u2014partly through the corny games Flo has put together and partly through a great deal of drinking\u2014it becomes more and more obvious that something terrible is going to happen.<\/p>\n

That feeling of dread is whipped up by the house itself, a modern and incongruous glass and steel concoction in the middle of the countryside, and by the dusting of snow that appears on the first night, making everything that much more uncomfortable and somehow more isolated. The author refers to Christie\u2019s And Then There Were None<\/em> but I was more strongly reminded of Agatha\u2019s creepy psychological thriller, Endless Night<\/em>, which focuses on an unwanted house in the middle of nowhere and also, true golden age style, has a very tiny suspect pool.<\/p>\n

As Ware unspools her concise, tightly plotted story\u2014with, yes, a tiny suspect pool\u2014I was impressed by her feat of keeping the reader guessing until almost the very last page. While Ware fits into a newfangled tradition of British psychological thrillers, she\u2019s avoided the trap of writing too long, and she also appears to embrace a classic mystery structure. It looks to all appearances like this new talent is going to settle in for a long career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first novel by Brit Ruth Ware, and it\u2019s that rare thriller that is also a mystery. In a straight thriller, you may know whodunnit, and the thrill is catching or finding that person in time. But combining the best parts of the thriller\u2014pacing, suspense\u2014with the best parts of a mystery\u2014whodunnit?\u2014is a rarer … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}