the lying game

Last night I finished The Lying Game, the third and most recent mystery/thriller by British novelist Ruth Ware. I've written before about her two previous books.

In short, I think this third novel had many of the same strengths as her first two books but some of the same types of storytelling problems as her second book. The quality of her writing, however, continues to improve with each new novel.

After reading this third book, I finally figured out why I didn't think the second one quite worked, and the most recent one had the same problem: at a certain point, about three-quarters of the way though the story, the character jeopardy stopped escalating. The jeopardy doesn't go away, but it stops building.

The best written mystery/thrillers have escalating jeopardy right up to the climax. That's what makes them so compelling. What was urgent half-way through the book is nothing compared to the urgency as you approach the climax, where the stakes are so much higher for the central character.

Nonetheless, Ware is a very talented writer, and I look forward to more of her work. The earliest novels for many writers are often not their career best, and I suspect she'll be of them, too.

the woman in cabin ten

Last month I wrote here about how much enjoyed British novelist Ruth Ware's first book.

I had her second novel on hold at the library and read it right after it came in a few days ago. This one is titled The Woman in Cabin Ten and is a mystery thriller about a troubled journalist who thinks she saw a murder aboard a luxury cruise, but no one believes her and there's utterly no evidence of any crime having been committed.

I enjoyed this novel a lot, and it's a real page turner, particularly in the first half, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as Ware's first book. I don't think the characters were as well defined and complex as her last book and the plot felt forced in passages toward the end.

She apparently wrote this book in a lot shorter period than the first one, and maybe that's why it doesn't quite measure up to her last manuscript, when she had the luxury of time to burnish it more.

Still, the book is a lot of fun, and you can easily imagine how you might try to work yourself out of the fix in which the central character finds herself after snooping around too much where she doesn't belon. I now have her third and most current novel on hold at the library and am looking forward to that one, too.

in a dark, dark wood

Last night I finished British novelist Ruth Ware's first book, In a Dark, Dark Wood, published in 2015. She's written two novels since then, the latest published this year, and all three of her books hit the bestseller lists.

Her work had been discussed on several book forums I frequent, and although I wasn't familiar with her, I decided to check her out. I'm certainly glad I did and now have her second book on order at our local library.

In a Dark, Dark Wood is part mystery, part thriller, and is very tightly written for a first novel. The plot is somewhat complex, and the author manages to keep all the balls in their air without dropping any.

For almost all of the book, you're not sure if you're dealing with an unreliable narrator, which makes it all the more of a page turner. I love stories with unreliable narrators as well as those where you're uncertain if you're dealing with one or not.

I found only one sort-of plot hole the author didn't miss but didn't quite plug effectively, either. It actually had a easier fix that I believe the writer set up and did not really use, but she obviously didn't think of that or didn't want to go there.

The book is not long, so if you like tightly paced, edgy thrillers from a woman's perspective coupled with an intriguing mystery that's not quite like anything you've seen before, you might enjoy In a Dark, Dark Wood. It's a very fun and enjoyable read.