Review: The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood

The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Did you download Happy?’

Ruth Ware’s “The Turn of the Key” is even better than her last novel, “The Death of Mrs Westaway”. Like the previous book, the story takes place in a remote Victorian house and is reminiscent of many classic gothic novels, but this time the house in question, Heatherbrae in northern Scotland, is a chimera, its ancient stone walls extended in modern steel and glass, every function, every utility, (almost) every lock controlled by smart devices - du Maurier meets Crichton...

The story is told from a prison cell as a nanny, jailed for the murder of a child, writes to a lawyer, pleading for his help, protesting her innocence. Rowan Caine, engaged by successful architects, Bill and Sandra Elincourt, is almost immediately thrown in at the deep end - left to look after the couple’s children as her employers attend a conference. As well as struggling with the unfamiliar house, the unintuitive, highly complex Happy interface, and Mrs. Elincourt’s detailed childcare ‘manual’, Rowan is met by hostility from the girls in her charge. Maddie, the elder of the two girls at home, seems particularly determined to reject any attempt to build a relationship, the prospect of a returning moody teenage daughter is daunting, and a series of strange noises in the night, accompanied by a malfunctioning Happy, suggest that there may be truth to the stories that previous nannies left their posts in fear.

Ruth Ware builds tension through the book and some passages are really creepy. And there is the suspicion that Rowan may be an unreliable narrator, the only version of events we get being hers. The pages start to race by as we build to the inevitable conclusion, the inevitable death. And when the end comes, there is a devastating twist which leaves the reader exhausted.

I have been on a really good run of satisfying novels recently and “The Turn of the Key” can sit on the shelf with any of them.


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