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The founder of a popular app and seven of his co-workers go on a retreat at a small ski resort in France. The chalet is remote and only accessible at its high perch in the mountains by a funicular railway enclosed in glass. The views are normally stunning, but when the guests arrive for the week, snow is falling thickly and clouds obscure the vistas. Two employees run the chalet week to week, one mainly working as the chef and the other primarily acting as hostess.
What is planned as an opportunity for the leaders to practice mindfulness and collaborate on possible improvements to the app starts off with some division over changes some want to make, and soon after the visitors get to have their first ski outing, an avalanche hits and everyone is stuck. The group tries to get help from far below even as they lose cell reception and Wi-Fi and then power. To put everyone more on edge, one person hadn’t returned from skiing, even before the avalanche hit, and the remaining nine people try to figure out what happened. Then one more person in the group dies, and it starts to become apparent that one of the people in the chalet is responsible. And then another is murdered.
As hours and days pass, tensions ratchet up higher and higher. No one knows whom to trust, and no one knows when rescuers will come for them. The retreat turns into a fight for survival.
This is now my third Ruth Ware novel, and I think it’s the best that I’ve read so far. The premise is based on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None…, much like The Turn of the Key turned out to be a riff on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Ware pays excellent tribute to those classics by crafting suspenseful novels with care and precision. Each piece of the story in One by One plays an important part, and layers in the plot make this a top-notch mystery/thriller. My one (big) complaint is that this book has, inexplicably, a ridiculous amount of vulgarity. The other books I read, including also The Death of Mrs. Westaway, were rated high, but for far fewer instances of strong language. I am completely baffled about why she thought this assault of profanity was necessary.
Rated: High. There are a whopping 143 instances of strong language in this book, as well as other milder language and about 15 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content is minimal; it references people having had sex but there are no details. Violence includes several murders, that aren’t gory in any way, and an accidental death that refers to a lot of blood and some gore.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
