Jury time inspired thriller
Ruth’s latest mystery takes ‘what if I am wrong’ as starting point
The bestselling author of One by One, Ruth Ware, delivers another unputdownable thriller with The It Girl. Her seventh thriller is full of creepy chills and unforeseen twists as the case of a popular and charismatic woman's murder is reopened.
The case concerns a woman who, years after the murder of her roommate at Oxford, confronts the possibility that she may have accused the wrong person of committing the crime.
Ware got the idea after serving jury duty. “I was unprepared for the amount of emotional responsibility I felt throughout that process,” she said.
“Even though the case wasn’t a big deal, I came out of it thinking, What must it be like to make the wrong call, or to be in a situation where it’s a knife’sedge decision and you’re the crucial witness, responsible for putting someone away?”
Ruth Ware is the pen name for Ruth Warburton who lives in Sussex with her husband and two teenage sons.
As fans of her books – including In a Dark Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, One by One and the Death of Mrs Westaway – knows, Ware’s characters have a rich interior life and the heroine, Hannah, of The It GIrl is no exception.
The author relishes the freedom of writing standalone novels but acknowledges that topping herself with each book can be challenging.
“When you write standalone novels, there’s a pressure to reinvent the wheel each time, to do it the same but different – better, faster, smarter – and there’s a limit to which you can do that.
"But I don’t feel quite so panicked about it now. I’ve learned to enjoy the process, to trust myself and my readers.”