Murder on the Spotify express
RUTH WARE’S latest book, which openly acknowledges its debt to Agatha Christie’s masterful And Then There Were None, might strike a chord with readers feeling increasingly trapped and restless as the nights close in and lockdown lingers on. At least, though, such readers don’t have to face a psychopathic killer slowly picking off members of their household one by one.
Ware has set her version of the classic golden age crime trope in a remote boutique Alpine ski resort where members of a music streaming start-up have gathered for a corporate get-together, only to find themselves trapped when an avalanche knocks out the power. Rather more alarmingly, their CEO, a former Dutch model who the night before announced a controversial buy-out bid that has split the company, has disappeared on the slopes. A couple of hours later, another employee is found dead in his room, a poisoned cup of coffee on his desk. Ware uses two alternating viewpoints, Erin, who works at the resort, and Liz, a former employee who has shares and voting rights in the company, to narrate what is a textbook study in mounting panic. Those still alive, each of whom has their private professional agendas and resentments, are caught in a psychological endgame, trying to second guess the killer’s identity before they end up dead, either at the killer’s hands or from the rapidly dropping temperature. Ware does this sort of thing so skilfully and immersively, you can forgive the fact her novel is assembled from a welltrodden formula. Books shouldn’t really be gobbled down like cake but with Ware’s there’s no other way.