Two by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10 has been getting lots of press and I just finished another mystery by her, The Lying Game. Both offer pretty intricate plotting, detailed character development and competent setting descriptions. Kirkus describes The Woman in Cabin 10 as "a classic 'paranoid woman' story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery." Narrator Lo Blacklock scores a career-building chance to cover the maiden voyage of a luxury cruise ship, the Aurora. Days before departure, however, she is traumatized by a break-in at her apartment in the middle of the night. While aboard the luxury yacht Aurora, she hears a loud splash in the middle of the night from the vicinity of the adjacent cabin's veranda. When she tries to report her concerns about the disappearance of the cabin's occupant, from whom she had borrowed mascara the previous night, she is told that no one has occupied that cabin during the voyage. As Kirkus notes further, "The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts." I disagree with their assessment that the ending was unsatisfying, but do agree that the excerpts from newspaper stories scattered throughout the text are a bit distracting, although they are intended to build tension. Additional review from USA Today (with several excerpts from the book).

The Independent provides a great synopsis of The Lying Game: "the premise of which is simple but highly effective: four old schoolfriends bound together by a terrible secret.
Fifteen years ago, Isa Wilde arrived at Salten House, a boarding school on the south coast [of England]. She and three other girls, Fatima, Kate and Thea, form an inseparable clique impervious to the world around them. They spend their weekends at Kate’s home, the Old Mill, a ramshackle building overlooking the nearby estuary, under the libertarian eye of her father Ambrose (the school’s art teacher), and in the company of Kate’s sort-of half-brother Luc.
Most of the girls’ time, however, is spent playing the Lying Game, competing with each other to get away with increasingly outrageous untruths: to “outwit everyone else – ‘us’ against ‘them’”. Then one day something terrible happens, and henceforth they’re “lying not for fun, but to survive.”
Nearly two decades later, they are reunited by an urgent text message from Kate, "I need you." Over the next few weeks, it becomes apparent that the premise for their ultimate, elaborate lie was itself a lie. And now, they are not the only ones who know where the body is buried. Kirkus gives a laudatory review, claiming you won't want to do anything else until you finish the book.