The Denver-based book club Crime & Beyond has a new
author to report on; let’s see what they have to say.
Crime & Beyond book club took a break from the Testosterone
filled books where one lone man takes down all the bad guys with his bare
hands. This month we read Ruth Ware’s The
Woman in Cabin 10, a psychological whodunit of sorts by a new-to-us author.
Critics hail Ware as a modern day Agatha Christie with a Girl on a Train feel. We felt that the latter was a fair comparison
but the Christie influence aspect led to a great discussion.
The story revolves around a woman named Lo, a travel writer
who gets assigned to cover the maiden
voyage of a new luxury cruise liner called the Aurora. Lo boards the ship in
somewhat of a state, since her apartment
has just been burgled and she’s pretty rattled by it. Her anxiety, and her
heavy drinking, are both in full swing
when she believes she witnesses a woman in the next cabin being thrown
overboard. She reports it to the ship’s security
but is told that the cabin is empty and that there are no passengers or crew
members unaccounted for. Lo—and the reader—spend the remainder of the book
trying to figure out what really happened, what she really saw, and whether or
not she’s losing her mind.
We had a lot of great reviews and held quite an in-depth
discussion. A lot of people were torn because Lo was such a mess of a
character, but her mental condition really did set the stage for the rest of the
book. It was a great closed universe whodunit with a list of suspects to choose from. I personally loved the cruise ship setting and knowing that no one could get on or off the boat at the time of the suspected crime.
The person who led the discussion even contacted the author with some
plot questions and was rewarded with very fast and very detailed answers to her
questions. It was wonderful to see an author so engaged with her readers!
The Woman in Cabin 10
has been optioned by CBS for a movie, so now is the time to read the
book; we know it’s always better than the movie.
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