The Death of Mrs. Westaway

This is a mystery novel that seems to want to take after the likes of Agatha Christie, but lacks the necessary strengths to do so. Ruth Ware is a prominent thriller writer, and though she decides to dip into mystery here, I did not think she was very successful.

The pros: It was cleanly written and edited, with decently solid characters, which almost tricks you into believing it is well done, but then come...

The cons: I think Ware's attempt to format this one as a mystery was a mistake. While it has many of the tropes of classic mystery (the house in the English countryside, a contested will, mistaken identity, family members with secrets, a nursery rhyme that for some reason keeps coming up...), it lacks what mystery readers love—the puzzle.

It's not that you can't figure it out as you go along, because you definitely can. It's just that you are about 50-100 pages ahead of the protagonist (the amateur “detective,” in this case) the entire book. Unlike detectives in most mystery novels, the main character Hal only KIND OF wants to find out the truth and takes FOREVER to do so.

As it turns out, everything she needs to solve the mystery is readily available to her the entire time, she just never feels like looking at any of it, as she is so caught up in her own emotions.

This brings me to the next downfall of this novel: the protagonist represents bad women stereotypes. It may not seem like it at first, but as you go along you realize that she is so caught up with her own emotions (fear of being found out, heartbreak at losing her mother, confusion at the mystery), that it stands directly in the way of her using her REASON to put two and two together and ask OBVIOUS questions. What is even more grating is that she thinks she is self-aware—referring to herself as this headstrong woman in search of the truth, denying being mousy and weak—but she then she acts mousy and weak the entire time.

The denouement was still an entertaining read, despite that fact that I had figured it out 50 pages earlier. Not sure I will read another book by Ruth Ware anytime soon... but maybe this one was a fluke.