Ware’s latest a high-tech spellbinder

“The Turn of the Key,” a new novel by Ruth Ware, is a Daphne du Maurier-like Gothic thriller set in the remote Scottish highlands but with a modern technology twist.

Ware — bestselling author of “In a Dark, Dark Wood;” “The Woman in Cabin 10;” and “The Death of Mrs. Westaway” — specializes in menacing spellbinders with narrators who may or may not be reliable.

That’s the case with Rowan Caine, the young woman caught up in the intrigue of “The Turn of the Key.” Rowan, a downon-her-luck employee of the Little Nippers day-care center in London, applies for what looks to be a dream nanny job tending to the four children of an upscale couple of architects who have renovated a massive • “The Turn of the Key” (Scout, 352 pages, $27.99) by Ruth Ware

Victorian mansion in Scotland and made it their home.

Sandra and Bill Elincourt have outfitted the huge Heatherbrae House with state-of-the art “smart” devices. There’s an app for monitoring the baby’s room, preparing coffee and snacks, turning on the showers, opening the curtains and just about everything else, including cameras creepily positioned in every room. Ironically, given the novel’s title, there is only one working key in the place, something that will figure into Rowan’s increasingly haunted experience on the job.

Yes, she gets the job that comes with a seven-figure salary and lots of benefits. The Elincourts have had trouble keeping a nanny.

Rowan, however, has her own set of secrets. As the novel begins, well after her tenure at Heatherbrae House, she is in prison, charged with the murder of one of the Elincourt children. Except for a few pages, the novel is presented entirely in Rowan’s voice, through her desperate letters telling her story and pleading her innocence to her attorney: “I am the nanny in the Elincourt case, Mr. Wrexham. And I didn’t kill that child.”

Ware has filled the story with suspicious characters: Sandra, the perpetually optimistic mother; Bill, the absent father; Jean, the crusty housekeeper who frowns at Rowan from the get-go; Jack, the handsome groundskeeper who always seems to be around; and the children themselves, from baby Petra, to Ellie and Maddie, the manipulative school-age girls, and sullen teenager, Rhiannon.

The manor itself has a dark past, including the death and possible murder of a child. The lights and sounds of the smart house tend to go on and off on their own, adding to the haunted atmosphere and Rowan’s sleepless nights. At the end, all is resolved — well, almost all. Ware has done a first-rate job of manufacturing and maintaining tension until the final page.

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