Book Review: One by One

Ruth Ware has many a times taken a page out of Agatha Christie's playbook in the past, but her latest outing One By One might as well be the most brazen of all. Almost a direct rework of the acclaimed And Then There Were None ("Our guests are disappearing one by one, like some bad horror movie," remarks a character at one point), the book has a compelling setup, a big pool of suspects — all from a tech startup behind a social app which lets users snoop on the music their favourite celebrities are listening to in real-time (brace for some pointless chatter about privacy concerns and GDPR) — who may or may not harbour ulterior motives, and an isolated mountain chalet in the French Alps. Too bad, then, the execution of it is all dreadfully dull and repetitive, turning what should have been a thrilling cat-and-mouse game into a boring, contrived mess that quite doesn't land. A familiar spin on the locked-door mystery with paper-thin characters that do nothing to redeem a maddeningly implausible plot.