Disordered Daggers : The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (2017)

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A New Year, and a new opportunity to revive my efforts to review the CWA Dagger nominees.  This time I’m going to be sampling titles submitted by publishers for the awards, ahead of the longlist announcements in May. My new job with its hour or so of commuting has given me more reading time (and the more sociable shift patterns have also helped.)  There will be (I hope) occasional diversions back to previous winners and other acquisitions from Alton’s excellent second-hand bookshop.

 

Not having read any Ruth Ware before, so wasn’t sure what to expect from The Lying Game.  This first-person thriller is at its strongest in the opening half, as narrator Isa is summoned, baby in tow, to an impromptu school reunion with Thea, Fatima and Kate: a home office lawyer,  casino hostess, GP and artist bound by a promise made to each other seventeen years earlier after their expulsion from the said school.  The coastal locale, school milieu and intense adolescent friendships are all drawn with page-turning skill : I wasn’t surprised to learn after finishing the book that Ruth Ware is a fan of Josephine Tey’s “Miss Pym Disposes”.  (Incidentally, the book aces the Bechdel Test several times over.)

I enjoyed the book but was underwhelmed by the ending, which I would have preferred to have been messier and more complicated, and without the presence of a fire engine.