Slowly but surely I’m working through the back catalog of Ruth Ware, an author who categorically ISN’T the Agatha Christie of her time but is billed as such anyway.
This time, she is trying for more than just a Christie pastiche to her credit, this time she is stretching her gothic fiction muscles, the ones also utilized in her Turn of the Key. This is a good thing. Turn of the Key is the first Ware book I read, and it left a certain expectation of quality, an expectation which was let down with the subsequent (Ware’s earlier) reads. When Ware goes for the traditional estrogen-powered thriller that sheeple just can’t get enough of, she is average to slightly above average at best, despite the hyped-up praise. When she goes gothic, she does much, much nicer. Mind you, Ware is innately a pastiche-like author, meaning that her traditional thrillers read like desperate tries to emulate Christie and her gothic ones read like desperate tries to emulate Du Maurier, another writer Ware confesses to admiring. Still though, let her stay with gothic, at least it offers excellent atmosphere she can overwrite in attempts to distract you from the unavoidable predictability of the plot. Which is to say, this book is a fun read. It read nicely. It has a surprisingly (because she’s 21 and kids are obnoxious) likable protagonist who, desperate to get ahead in her hardscrabble life decides to con her way into an inheritance she thinks she is offered by mistake. Perfectly understandable, really. She has nothing but debt and a dangerous man out to get her for it (she’s crap with money, like most 21-year-olds), her mom had died tragically a few years ago, but even back in the day the two of them didn’t have much. Both are/were clairvoyant on the Brighton Beach boardwalk without any pretense at being supernaturally gifted. So, basically like a low-level con. Now it’s time to put those skills to the test and see if she can con her way into some of that Westaway money. Our protagonist IS a Westaway, but she believes herself to be the wrong one, not the one the irascible and thoroughly unpleasant Westaway matriarch meant to leave her money to. And yet, once she gets involved with the family, the situation becomes more and more complex and increasingly more difficult to disentangle herself from. Soon, it’s a proper mess. And then the mess gets dangerous. Of course, there’s a snow in scene for the denouement, Ware is nothing if not a conscientious recycler. Of course, there are secrets long buried and of course, plot will twist. Exactly how much of a surprise the revelations of the novel will be depends on how savvy of aa armchair crime solver you are. Personally, I figured out most of it, frustratingly early on. And I’d love to say it’s because of my super-duper genius detective brain, but really it has a lot to do with the fact that Ware doesn’t do a good job of obscuring the plot. She may be a decent writer overall, but her plotting leaves a lot to be desired for those who mainly go in for the mystery aspect of it all. To be fair, she herself in the afterword states that she is more interested in the crime’s effects on the characters and their drama than the crime itself. It shows. It’s also why she can never be the next Christie. Or even the next Du Maurier for that matter. Because, traditional this view may be, crime fiction ought to be about the crime. You should NOT know what’s going on, you should work to figure out what’s going on. You should be surprised, delighted and stunned by the final reveals. Left marveling at their cleverness. Their ingenuity. Their originality. You won’t get that from this book. Or any other Ware books. But you will be entertained all the same. It also stands to mention that this book (much like this review, sorry) is way too long, though it reads quickly enough. Ok, over and out. Read at your leisure or your pleasure. Mileage may vary.
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