Nowhere to Run... Trapped by an Avalanche with a Murderer (One by One thriller REVIEW)

Plenty of things sound like less fun than a week-long team-building trip with co-workers--root canals, watching paint dry, etc--but as far as “having-a-great-time-and-getting-away-from-work-crap” goes, it ranks way down the list. 

Of course, when you picture one of those corporate morale-boosting retreats, it’s likely full of “trust-fall” games, goofy role-playing exercises, and rah-rah positivity talks. What probably never, ever, crosses your mind is a weekend in which the object is—literally— just stay alive… which is precisely what one company trip becomes, in Ruth Ware’s latest thriller, One by One.

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A week at a small, boutique ski resort high in the French Alps, with a few work meetings penciled in around the hours allocated for skiing, snowboarding, and partying aprés ski in the cozy, private lodge (which also boasts both a live-in housekeeper and chef, to ensure all needs are met)…  sounds like a perfect bonding-and-work jaunt for an up-and coming British high-tech outfit—responsible for designing a hot new app, Snoop—made up of a group of ten millennials. (What could possibly go wrong?)

A whole lot, it turns out… beginning with a major blizzard that’s fast approaching (severely limiting options for the aforementioned fun-in-the-snow activities). So, following the first meeting—during which one of the two founders blindsides the rest of the team by springing her grand plan to sell the cash-strapped company for a huge profit—a break is called, to let everyone go blow off some steam on the slopes (before the weather deteriorates any further).

The skiing-as-pressure-release idea backfires, though, when that same partner fails to return from their afternoon in the snow, leaving the rest of them even more on edge. Did she manage to ski down the mountain, to a little village below? Did she get confused out in the poor visibility and go off-piste, encountering difficulties, or… something worse??

Then, in the middle of that worry, the unthinkable happens… an avalanche, sending tons of snow and rocks hurtling down the mountain, obliterating the trails, knocking out the power, leaving the chalet cut off from any source of help… and stranding a handful of increasingly fractious and terrified colleagues in the very last place most of them want to be: together.

But, it’s only when there’s another suspicious event—a death, this time—that everyone begins to comprehend the greater threat isn’t outside in the frigid cold… it’s inside, with them. 

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Ware is often called our modern-day Agatha Christie, and One by One does nothing to dispel that comparison, with its And Then There Were None format (plus a bit of a “locked-room mystery” aspect). 

One by One gets an au courant spin via its cast of techno-geek millennials, who converse expansively in cyber speak… but, for the most part, are noticeably less fluent in regular, person-to-person communications. (Ware employs a Snoop-based device at the start of each chapter that speaks to who/what the characters—and their world—are, to clever effect.) 

With its young, attractive set of characters, stunningly-picturesque locale, timely topics (themes of privilege, the realities of start-ups, and sexism in the workplace run throughout), vivid natural disaster, and plenty of hold-your-breath scenes, One by One is a book I’m really hoping gets optioned by a movie studio… but for now, you’ll just have to enjoy the written ride. I certainly did. :)
~GlamKitty