REVIEW: Zero Days by Ruth Ware
Dear Ms. Ware:
After reading and enjoying The It Girl last year, I was pleased when Janine alerted me to your new book. I wasn’t sure about the blurb, though:
Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect—her.
Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer in this unpauseable and heart-pounding mystery…
The blurb also compares this to “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”, but it reminded me of another Angelina Jolie movie, “Salt”, in which a government agent goes on the run after she is framed for a crime and her husband is murdered. In Zero Days, Jack (nee Jacintha) is not a government agent, but she’s more resourceful than the average person, by far, due to her profession. I’m not sure why the blurb gave me pause…maybe just because it felt more like an action-y thriller than a psychological thriller? I am drawn more toward the latter, though whenever I read action-heavy books, I have to admit that they have a propulsive energy that often makes them really compelling reads.
Anyway, the book opens with Jack on the job, testing the security of a company by breaking in at night. Gabe, her husband, is home, doing his part from behind a computer screen. Jack gets in and out with a couple of close calls. Too close, as it turns out, because as she’s returning to her car, after she’s told Gabe she’s headed home, she walks into the arms of the waiting police. This delays her return home by several hours, and she can’t reach Gabe by phone. When she finally gets home, Jack finds a bloody scene – Gabe’s throat has been slit. In shock, she does not call the police for some unspecified period of time – she honestly doesn’t know if minutes or an hour have passed before she’s able to make the call. This lapse is later held against her.
Police are, or appear to be, initially sympathetic and unsuspicious of Jack. She goes to stay with her beloved older sister Helena and her family. But a day passes and Jack is called in for another police interview, one that doesn’t go quite as smoothly. Jack begins to regret brushing off her sister’s suggestion to bring an attorney (I agreed: sister was definitely right there).
Then the police leave Jack in the interview room and two things happen that prompt her flight – she receives an email from an insurance company about a policy that supposedly has just been taken out on Gabe’s life, and she overhears (way too conveniently) one of the cops talk about how clearly guilty she is and how they should just arrest her now. Jack McGyvers her way out of the police station and just like that she’s a fugitive from the law.
Even though I thought the overheard conversation was convenient, that, the mysterious life insurance policy, and the fact that Jack has good reason to distrust cops combined to make her choice to flee feel more logical than it might otherwise have seemed.
On the last point – when Jack was younger, she dated a cop, Jeff Leadbetter, for a short while. When she tired of his controlling ways and broke up with him, he assaulted her. Jack filed a report against him, but not only were there no consequences for him, but for some time after Jack was harassed by the police. Undeserved parking tickets, “random” traffic stops, her car tagged in the system as stolen and more. Eventually, the retaliation tapered off, but Jack hasn’t forgotten. She has a better than average reason for distrusting the police.
Also, while on the face of it Jack’s determination to “find the real killers” is unrealistic, she also has better than average skills and resources, as noted. Her first step is to try to find out who really took out the damning life insurance policy.
Jack has an untraceable phone and the support of her sister (I kind of liked that Helena wasn’t all “you need to turn yourself in!” but instead trusted Jack’s competence). She reaches out to Gabe’s best friend, Cole, who also works in tech security, for a company that develops apps. Cole provides Jack with a place to hide while she tries to break into the insurance company’s system and figure out who actually took out the life insurance policy on Gabe. But all too soon, Jack’s refuge is discovered and she has to run again.
The situation becomes increasingly dire – Jack injured her side fleeing her house (where she went after she left the police station), and the injury has become infected. The tension of the novel rachets up as the police close in on an seriously ill Jack.
There was a lot I liked about Zero Days: the writing is strong, Jack is a believably fierce heroine, and the pacing of the story kept me turning the (virtual) pages. Gabe was only in the story for a short time, but he was a well-drawn character and I really believed in Jack’s love for him and grief for his loss.
Where it lagged a little – the depiction of other characters, including Jack, was weaker. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of first-person narrative and action-focused plotting, but she felt a little cardboard to me.
Also, this wasn’t a book with a plethora of suspects or twists. By mid-point in the story, there were about two possible candidates, and one felt much more obvious than the other. The “why” was vaguely guessable too; the details weren’t really important.
Still, Zero Days engaged me from start to finish. It wasn’t my usual type of thriller, but it was worthy of a B+.
Best,
Jennie
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Jennie, from your interesting review I think the answer is no, but am I correct that there is no torture or gore?
Hi Jennie, I’m trying to get into thrillers a little more, since they are so plentiful, but I don’t want any with poor writing or bleak endings. I have enjoyed books by Lisa Jewell and Joshilyn Jackson (probably bc neither started out as suspense/thriller authors). Any other authors that you recommend I check out?
@LML: No torture; there are a couple of fairly unpleasant descriptions of the murder of Gabe (his throat is slit so definitely gory, but not excessively descriptive at all), and some descriptions of the wound Jack suffers which gets infected. That’s all that I can think of.
@SusanS: Hmm, even though I’ve been reading suspense for a while now I don’t have a real stable of “go to” authors. I feel like much like my early romance reading, I’ve had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a few princes. That said, Ware has a strong reputation and I’m diving into her backlist. I could probably more easily recommend individual books if you’re interested.
@Jennie: Did Girl A have a happy ending? I remember you liked that one a lot (I keep thinking I should try it).
@Janine: It had an ambiguous ending which I would not call happy. I thought it was a fantastic book but I hesitate to recommend it because it’s so harrowing.
Thanks, @Jennie.
The husband who dies early in the book but who nonetheless is one of the most strongly delineated characters reminds me of Linda Howard’s SON OF THE MORNING. It appears that both books will break your heart because the husband is so clearly a hero of the story – the heroine mourns his loss and so do you. There’s a lovely scene at the end of the Howard where Grace visits Ford’s grave and thanks him for the courage that allowed her to escape.
@SusanS: Oh, one author rec I can think of – I read Lucy Foley’s first two mysteries: The Hunting Party and The Guest List. They are pretty similar thematically, but both are entertaining and have evocative settings – I really like strong settings in my suspense. She has a third thriller, The Paris Apartment, which I haven’t gotten to but will probably pick up at some point.
@Susan/DC: I don’t know that I ever read Son of the Morning – it’s a time travel book, right? Howard has several books where the heroine is married before the hero and the husband dies – she seemed to like that theme.
@Jennie: Yes, SON OF THE MORNING is a time travel book. It’s also interesting in that the hero (the non-husband one) and heroine don’t meet till well into the book. I’ve not read any Linda Howard for a long time and don’t remember the dead husband theme, but while I’ve read several of her books I’ve not read anywhere close to all of them. Hated the first one I read, AN INDEPENDENT WIFE, because the heroine was much closer to a doormat than independent and the hero was far too controlling, but I loved SON OF THE MORNING.
@Susan/DC: I think my favorite right now is Killing Time (another time travel, and kind of an unusual one in that the heroine is from the future and arrives at our time where the hero is from). It’s a gentler book for her and the hero isn’t quite so uber alpha. I recall also liking Cry No More (you will cry, guaranteed) and Kiss Me While I Sleep (assassin heroine). Both usual books. One thing to say for Howard (and I hate her politics), in her single title career she has never written the same book twice.
Most of her early stuff doesn’t hold up well but of her categories Midnight Rainbow and Diamond Bay were my favorites. An Independent Wife was her first book and TERRIBLE, I agree. Her most recent stuff is barely readable for me.