Distract yourself from lockdown with some splendid escapism from Ruth Ware, whose latest novel, One By One (Harvill Secker, £12.99), is a variant on the bad-things-happen-to-rich-people-in-remote-places subgenre, with nods to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. ... Greed, ambition, manipulation, secrets, nifty plotting and a cracking denouement add up to a suspenseful and spine-tingling page-turner.
It’s all rather silly but great fun, as the food starts to run out, the temperature drops, mobile reception goes down and the police still fail to arrive. As various people set off to to try and bring help, it all becomes deliciously cat and mouse, with a blisteringly good escape scene rounding everything off.
Her characters are the directors of a hugely successful music app, Snoop, which allows users to find out what celebrities are listening to in real time. They’re achingly hip, with first names like Topher and Tiger-Blue, but within hours of their arrival for a corporate retreat the lodge is cut off by an avalanche — and the guests start dying in bizarre circumstances. Ware’s novel is deliciously sly, and she manages to create sympathy for what are some initially unprepossessing characters
