Title: ONE BY ONE
Author: Ruth Ware
Read: May 2021
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
Getting snowed in at a beautiful,
rustic mountain chalet doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world,
especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a cozy fire, and company to keep
you warm. But what happens when that company is eight of your coworkers…and you
can’t trust any of them?
When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration
goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes
irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many
members short will the team be?
My musings:
Ruth Ware is one of my favourite writers and I
would read anything and everything she writes, even if it’s the back of a
cereal box. In ONE BY ONE she continues with her trademark of using a closed-door
setting, this time taking us to the idyllic location of a luxury Swiss ski
chalet. Ware’s love of the Alps and skiing becomes obvious through her vivid
descriptions of the winter landscape, the joy of skiing and the isolation
experienced when bad weather sets in. I skied a lot in my childhood and teenage
years, and it brought back memories of picturesque white mountain tops, but
also the terror of getting caught in a blizzard and cut off from the rest of
your ski group, with the thunder of an avalanche roaring down a distant
mountain range. Five stars for setting!
Do you work for a company who pays
for a team building exercise in a luxury ski resort for its employees? Alas,
neither do I. We are lucky to get some stale mince pies on Christmas day if someone
remembers. However, after reading this book, my envy is somewhat tempered,
because at least in our workplace there isn’t a serial killer maniac on the
loose (though sometimes we probably come close). Five stakeholders and five
employees are embarking on a week’s team building and brain storming in the
luxury ski chalet, but it is soon obvious that this is not a happy group. Their
new app “Snoop” may have taken off on the IT scene, but the team is divided as
to a way forward: sell the company for a few million and cash in now, or take
the risk of developing it further and getting even richer, or losing it all.
There is a 50/50 division in opinion, and with five stakeholders, the fifth
person now holds all the power. You can imagine this causing a bit of tension
in the group! This is not helped by the weather, which closes in around the mountains
and traps the group inside, cuts off power and mobile phone reception and makes
tempers flare even further. And then people start dying one by one ...
ONE BY ONE is the type of
slow-burning, character driven mystery Ware is famous for, and I loved the ever
mounting sense of claustrophobia and tension created by the inclement weather
and by strong personalities with differing opinions trapped in a small space
together. Locked room mysteries typically lack in fast paced action but make up
for it with simmering tension and an underlying sense of menace and danger,
which takes skill to build. And whilst this was not my favourite Ware book, her
skills as a writer were evident in the way the atmosphere escalated and the
claustrophobia got an ever tighter grip.
I did, however, struggle initially with the large cast of characters, who were difficult to tell apart at times (until a few of them died off and reduced their number). I also knew very early on who the murderer was, which stole a bit of the excitement. That said, the atmospheric setting alone was entertaining enough to keep reading, and I found the background info on the fictional app Snoop quite fascinating, even if it’s not something I would subscribe to. By far my favourite characters were hosts Erin and Danny, who stood apart from secondary characters who were interchangeable, entitled and fairly unlikeable. ONE BY ONE will appeal to readers who like a slow burner with a magnificent armchair travel setting and aren’t too disappointed if their detective skills exceed that of the characters’.
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