Books |
In a Dark, Dark Wood
Ruth Ware
By
Published: Aug 23, 2015
Category:
Fiction
Guest Butler Betsy Kane Ellis, when not reading, is a Life Enrichment Specialist at Jewish Family Service of St. Paul and an artist. She loves nothing more than putting books in the hands of young readers and finding “the next read” for friends and family. The last crowd-pleaser she reviewed was The Rocks.
No one could be more surprised than me that I am reading psychological thrillers. As an adult reader I have rarely read mysteries or stories of suspense. Too impatient. Always skipping forward to see what happened. Then Gone Girl happened, and I dipped my toe in the water, finding it quite satisfying. Then “The Girl on the Train,” which I thought was extremely clever. But I still wouldn’t have told you that I looked for books of this genre. That just wasn’t me.
Now, with Ruth Ware’s “In a Dark, Dark, Wood,” I’m ready to admit that I really like these books — and what’s not to like? One of my main requirements of a good read is that I can’t put it down and can’t wait to get back to it when life requires that I be doing other things. (Life can be annoying like that, if you love to read.) This book kept me up way past my bedtime the day I started it, and I carried it with me the next day on my errands, thinking I would finish it somewhere en route.
British crime fiction writer Leonora Shaw fiercely protects her well ordered reclusive life, her daily routine, her tiny flat — the things that keep her world from spinning out of control.
“I always start my morning the same way. Maybe it’s something about living alone – you’re able to get set in your ways, there’s no outside disruptions, no flatmates to hoover up the last of the milk, no cat coughing up a hairball on the rug…It’s a good existence for a writer…alone with the voices in your head, the characters you’ve created. In the silence they become very real. But it’s not necessarily the healthiest way to live.”
So when she wakes in a hospital bed with a bandaged head, covered with cuts, scrapes and bruises, she struggles to understand and remember what has happened to her. She has short bursts of terrifying memories that include blood and breaking glass and running. There is a policeman standing guard outside her hospital door. How did she get here, and is she being guarded by the person outside her door, or is she being protected?
What she can remember is that she was invited to a “hen do” (what we call a bachelorette party) for a childhood friend that she hasn’t seen in ten years. She has no idea why she is being invited and really doesn’t want to go, but the enthusiastic organizer of the weekend getaway manages to guilt her into accepting.
When she arrives at the remote wooded destination it is nightfall. She drives slowly up the bumpy, ragged driveway, expecting to see a cozy English cottage. Instead she finds a modern glass and steel structure set far back in the woods, miles from civilization…“looking as if it had been thrown down carelessly by a child tired of playing with some very minimalist bricks.” Once inside she is led “…into a long low room with the entire opposite wall made of glass, facing the forest. There was something strangely naked about it –– it felt like we were in a stage set, playing our parts to an audience of eyes out there in the wood.”
Eventually all the guests arrive and with drinks in hand they are asked to introduce themselves to each other. And here is where I started smiling with satisfaction. Debut novelist Ware is using the classic crime thriller set up: a remote location, a group of strangers who all have a different connection to the guest of honor, and a skittish hostess who is taking the festivities a little too seriously. Oh, and did I mention that cell reception is spotty at best and the landline is down? [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. For the Audio book, click here.]
(In an interview, Ware said, “I absolutely adore classic crime and read a huge amount as a teen–Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Sherlock Holmes, Josephine Tey, and many more.” I would guess she watched a Hitchcock movie or two as well.)
Ware starts hinting that the connection between Leonora (now “Nora”) and Clare, the soon-to-be bride, is a man, and a tragic love triangle when they were in their teens. Bit by bit Ware reveals, through Nora’s story, what deep dark secret Nora is holding onto.
“I had left without looking back — shell-shocked, reeling — and for a long time I’d concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping going, keeping the past firmly behind me.”
As Nora lies in anguish in her hospital bed, slowly learning who survived the weekend and who has not, she desperately struggles to remember the sequence of events where things went horribly wrong. This becomes more urgent as she realizes she has become the main suspect, and her innocence depends on regaining her memory. And so she thinks about each person who was there, and, as with any good drawing room mystery, she analyzes whether each guest could possibly have a motive for murder. Eventually she realizes what she has to do to prove her innocence, even if it costs her her life.
Ware’s author bio states that she “…has worked as a waitress, bookseller, teacher of English as a foreign language, and – most recently – a book publicist.” It will be to our favor if she never has to return to those other jobs.
EXCERPT
To read a chapter, click here.
