the DEATH of Mrs. WESTAWAY

A thriller doesn’t get any better than Ruth Ware’s latest nail-biter. Winner Winner chicken dinner if you can identify the murderer within the last fifty pages. It almost seemed like the murderer was a blue plate special and handed over to us...then unceremoniously taken from us with a sleight of hand (that hand belongs to master storyteller, Ruth Ware). Whodunit? Halfway through the novel, I didn’t even know there was a murder. My only criticism of Ware’s novel was the unnecessary sidebar with Hal and a loan shark’s hoodlum, it felt out of place. Wouldn’t the loan shark pursue her all the way to Trepassen? He didn’t even bother her when Hal stupidly kept coming back to her attic flat in Brighton. Okay enough of that; I just couldn’t let this brilliant novel go unscathed. I thought the italic font from one of the ladies' (which one?) 1994 diary was intense and kept the reader guessing... a welcomed offshoot of the story. The juxtaposition of the diary and the guts of the story had a somewhat melded effect for the general mood of the novel. Well done. I also enjoyed Mrs. Westaway’s solo servant, Mrs. Warren, who, I’m sure, reminded everybody (who read the novel, or saw the movie) of Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (see my 4/3/2016 review of Daphne’s similar work, Jamaica Inn). Nothing like a cantankerous old servant to stir-up the built-in hate of a dreary crumbling mansion on a cold rainy day. Haha.

Harriet (call me Hal) Westaway is a twenty-one year old girl that has a tarot card reading service in her booth on a Brighton’s West Pier. She recently lost her mother to a hit and run accident. She is in debt up to her wazoo. The tarot card business was her mother’s. Hal lives alone in an attic flat at Marine View Villas. “The name was a lie. There were no villas, only a slightly shabby little row of terraced houses, their paint peeling from constant exposure to the salty air...and there was no view.” One day she goes home to find two strange letters in among the many bills that were marked FINAL DEMAND. She owes for rent, gas and electricity, “But the one that really made her stomach turn-over was different from the official bills. It was a cheap envelope, obviously hand delivered, and all it said on the front, in ballpoint letters, was 'Harriet Westaway, top flat.'...Inside there was just one sheet of paper, with only a couple of sentences typed on it.” That same message showed up at her booth on the pier. “She had been ignoring calls and texts to that effect for months.” The message was always the same, “Sorry to have missed you. We would like to discuss you’re financial situation. We will call again.” Is it greetings from the loan shark? Hal threw everything in the recycling bin, but as she took a bite of her fish and chips, an elegant letter caught her eye.

At first she didn’t see it…"A letter in a stiff white envelope, addressed by hand, and stuffed into the bin along with the takeout menus.” She must have shoved it in there by mistake. She ripped open the letter, “The piece of paper she pulled out wasn’t an invitation. It was a letter, written on heavy, expensive paper, with the name of a solicitor’s firm on top.” The following is an abridged version of that letter, “I am writing at the instruction of my client, your grandmother, Hester Mary Westaway of Trepassen House, St. Piran...Mrs. Westaway passed away on 22nd November, at her home...As Mrs. Westaway’s solicitor and executor, it is my duty to contact beneficiaries under her will...Because of the substantial size of the estate, probate will need to be applied...The process of disbursement cannot begin until this has taken place...In the meantime, you could provide me with copies of two documents confirming your identity and address...Please write to your late grandmother’s housekeeper Mrs. Warren...Yours truly, Robert Treswick.” Maybe it’s me, but the character’s names and the towns they live in have the flavor of Charles Dickens all over them. Hal stared at the letter for a long time. Is there another Harriet Westaway “Because it didn’t make sense. Not one bit. Hal’s grandparents had been dead for more than twenty years.” Did they mail the letter to the wrong person? Could Hal pull off the deception and finally get out of debt? If she took wrongful money and got caught, she would go to jail.

“There had clearly been some sort of mistake. She was not Hal’s grandmother. The money belonged to someone else, and that was all there was to it. Tomorrow she would write back and tell Mr. Trewick that.” Or would she? She starts second guessing herself. “But what if it’s true? They wrote to you, didn’t they? They have your name and address.” But she knew it wasn’t true. However, she thinks to herself, “You could claim this money, you know. Not many people could, but if anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”  Okay, I didn’t want to review more then the first seventeen pages, so I’ll stop here. The good news is that you have 351 pages of pure excitement ahead of you. This is not the first time I’ve read this accomplished storyteller...see my 9/19/2017 review of The Lying Game and my 9/7/2016 review of The Woman in Cabin 10. In the three Ruth Ware books I’ve read, she has spent some chapter time writing about something that didn’t seem needed in the story. I mentioned in the first paragraph of my review that the incident with Hal and the loan shark’s hoodlum wasn’t necessary. Well, there was a second incident and I will talk about it in my comment section.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The second unneeded incident that Ruth wrote about was in chapter six. When a strange woman, who was waiting outside Hal’s Tarot Card booth (as Hal is closing up) says, “I’ve been waiting,” said a hectoring female voice. “Don’t you want customers?” Hal says to the woman that she should have knocked. The lady says, “If you was a real psychic, you would’ve known.” That’s an excellent point. Anyway, the lady moans about a son that has gone bad. After the session ends, the lady drops sixty pounds on Hal’s table and disappears out the door. Hal runs after her to tell her that she can’t accept that much money for a Tarot reading. Now what does the debt ridden Hal do? She puts all sixty pounds in a donation box. It doesn’t make any sense. Was the mysterious woman really the ghost of Mrs. Westaway? Did Hal donate the sixty pounds to charity because she needed to convince herself that she wasn’t a thief? The hoodlum disturbance happened in chapter seven. After those chapters, the reader never saw hide nor hair of either character. Is Ruth Ware writing symbolism into her novels for us to discover? If so, who was the hoodlum representing? The bad son? Interesting.

Also interesting is that in the exclusive B & N pages at the novel’s end, Ruth Ware says she picked out the Cornwall section of England for her novel because of her love for Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. “I’ve written a lot about Agatha Christie, but I often say that while Christie taught me how to plot, du Maurier’s books are my go-to for how to write character.”