One by One

by Ruth Ware

A remote Swiss ski chalet has been booked by the owners of a social media app called Snoop, for a weekend corporate retreat. The ten Snoop people, plus two chalet staff, add up to  twelve people at the resort, which has no cellphone service and is accessible only by a funicular railway from the village below.

We learn that an outside investor has offered a big price to acquire Snoop. The two key owners are sharply divided on whether to accept the offer or not: it could mean a big payday right away—but keeping control could mean even better returns in the future. Staff members are torn between the two sides of the argument.

Then an avalanche hits, wiping out the downhill ski routes and the funicular railway, as well as the landline phone service. The group is totally isolated at the chalet. Then things get worse: they’re hit with a full-blown blizzard and lose electricity.  

In a plot reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” guests start dying, one by one, and the dwindling group of survivors start suspecting each other. The story is told in alternating chapters by Erin (one of the chalet staff) and Liz (a former Snoop employee). Suspense ratchets up and twists follow twists, ramping up  to the final climax and beyond. This is a thrilling and satisfying novel by an author who’s widely acclaimed as a writer of psychological suspense.

Ruth Ware was born in 1977 and grew up in Lewes, a small town on the South coast of England. She’s been writing since she was a child, including novel-length stories in high school that she “hid under her bed.”

She studied English at Manchester University, where she became fascinated with medieval texts in particular. After university she worked in Paris as a teacher of English, then returned to London to work as a book publicist. She kept writing through all this, but was in her thirties before getting up the nerve to take her writing out into the world, submitting her work to agents and publishers.

Her first success, in 2012, was with a series of five young adult fantasy novels published under the name of Ruth Warburton. Her first adult thriller, In a Dark Dark Wood, was published in 2015 and quickly became a bestseller. Since then she has published a new thriller every year; One by One is her sixth.

She now lives in England, near Brighton, with her husband and two sons.

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