レビュー
Praise for The It Girl:
'An absolute belter. Could not put it down! I thought I knew who the killer was. Then I was CERTAIN it was another person! Then DEFINITELY another! Great characterisation, glamorous setting, all round FABALISS!' Marian Keyes
'Every Ruth Ware novel is a unique and unexpected gem and this one is no exception. A heady, tense, slowburn dream of a book, multi-layered and steeped in atmosphere and peril. I loved every page' Lisa Jewell
'Absolutely brilliant murder mystery - seamless, flawless, perfectly clued and utterly gripping' Sophie Hannah
‘Impeccably crafted and totally compulsive – you’ll be sad to reach the final page and realise you have to say goodbye’ JP Delaney
‘Ruth Ware’s richly textured The It Girl is at once an engrossing murder mystery while also a perfectly crafted and haunting examination of lost youth and the compromises of adulthood, as a woman unpicks the past secrets of her university friends to finally lay to rest her murdered best friend, the dazzling April. Reminiscent of The Secret History, Ware has surpassed herself with this gripping, absorbing whodunnit. I loved it! All hail the Queen' Sarah Pinborough
‘If you ever idly wish that Agatha Christie would write a new book, Ruth Ware has got you covered. The It Girl has all the clues, twists and red herrings you could wish for, in a thoroughly modern setting. An impeccably constructed mystery from start to finish' Jane Casey
'It’s brilliant. Ruth is the master of the fiendishly twisty, yet completely believable, plot' Elly Griffiths
'Just finished The It Girl by Ruth Ware and now my life is divided in two: before and after. Before: cool, calm, chilled. After: What? No! OMG! A wild ride that’s deliciously twisting, with countless gasp-out-loud moments' Janice Hallett
'A new Ruth Ware is always a treat and The It Girl is one of her best. You can almost see her smiling as she feeds you the little morsels that should help you work everything out - if only you were as clever as Ruth! As sleek and chilling as a knife between the ribs' Sarah J. Naughton
‘Clever. Compelling and with a terrific sense of place. Ruth Ware’s The It Girl grips to the end’ Jane Shemilt
抜粋
1. Before BEFORE
Afterwards, it was the door she would remember. It was open, she kept saying to the police. I should have known something was wrong.
She could have retraced every step of the walk back from the Hall: the gravel crunching beneath her feet of the path across Old Quad, under the Cherwell Arch, then the illegal shortcut through the darkness of the Fellows’ Garden, her feet light on the dew-soaked forbidden lawn. Oxford didn’t need KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs; that lawn had been the preserve of dons and fellows for more than two hundred years without needing to remind undergraduates of the fact.
Next, past the Master’s lodgings and along the path that skirted round the New Quad (close on four hundred years old, but still a hundred years younger than the Old Quad).
Then up staircase VII, four flights of worn stone steps, right up to the top, where she and April slept, on the left-hand side of the landing, opposite Dr. Myers’s rooms.
Dr. Myers’s door was closed, as it always was. But the other door, her door, was open. That was the last thing she remembered. She should have known something was wrong.
But she suspected nothing at all.
She knew what happened next only from what the others told her. Her screams. Hugh following her up the stairs, two at a time. April’s limp body sprawled across the hearth rug in front of the fire, almost theatrically, in the photos she was shown afterwards.
But she could not remember it herself. It was as if her brain had blocked it out, shut down, like a memory glitch on a computer: file corrupted—and no amount of patient questioning from the police ever brought her closer to that actual moment of recognition.
Only sometimes, in the middle of the night, she wakes up with a picture in front of her eyes, a picture different from the grainy Polaroids of the police photographer, with their careful evidence markers and harsh floodlit lighting. In this picture the lamps are dim, and April’s cheeks are still flushed with the last glimpse of life. And she sees herself running across the room, tripping over the rug to fall on her knees beside April’s body, and then she hears the screams.
She is never sure if that picture is a memory or a nightmare—or perhaps a mix of both.
But whatever the truth, April is gone.
著者について
Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; The It Girl; and Zero Days. Visit her at RuthWare.com or follow her on Twitter @RuthWareWriter.
