Thriller Review: Zero Days | Ruth Ware

I’m not alone in sharing that I’m a big fan of Ruth Ware. I’ve read all of her books and enjoyed each of them, so the bar for her books is a high bar to clear for me. When I read Zero Days and previously read The It Girl, I noticed a shift in the type of stories Ware is focusing on. For me, I’ll always love the magic of her earlier, gothic, atmospheric thrillers most. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t also enjoy these newer books in a different way.

Ruth Ware’s newest thriller Zero Days is more action-oriented than any of her prior work. In Zero Days, the murder of a cybersecurity expert sends his wife on the run as she tries to find out who murdered her husband.

About the Book | Zero Days

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. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

My Review | Zero Days

The first chapter throws the reader right into the action, and it took me a bit to orient myself to what was happening. Jack and Gabe are a married couple that have a unique job as penetration experts. Essentially, companies hire them to break into their systems physically and remotely (both their corporate offices and their cybersecurity systems) and report back on where they detected weak spots that could leave the company vulnerable to being hacked or compromised.

In the opening chapter, Jack and Gabe are running one of these exercises where Jack is onsite physically, while Gabe remains at home on the computer. The job was relatively standard for them, and while they stay in contact through much of it, they lose contact at some point. When Jack finally arrives back home late in the night, she finds Gabe sitting at his computer with his throat slit.

The first chapter was a bit confusing, but once I figured out what Jack and Gabe were hired to do, it made a lot more sense. I felt Jack’s pain arriving home to find Gabe murdered. He was a rock in her life—a life that hadn’t always been the easiest. After reporting the murder to the police, Jack leaves to stay with her sister Helena, who has a husband and two daughters. But when the police bring her back to the station, Helena cautions her about it.

Jack is more naïve than her sister though, giving the interview with good intention. But at some point it becomes clear to Jack that the police aren’t interviewing her to try to find out more information, they are interviewing her because she is their primary suspect in the murder. No one could be better equipped than Jack to escape the police station mid-interview. Afterall, she may be paid to break into locked places, but her skills easily translate to breaking out of them as well.

The book primarily tells the story of Jack’s time on the run, attempting to evade the police (who have opened a public manhunt searching for her) and also searching for clues to understand who murdered Gabe and why. I found the who and why of the crime to be the most compelling part of the book. At times Jack trusts different people from their life and I was suspicious each time. While the pool of people who could have betrayed her or Gabe was relatively small, the intricacy of the motive she uncovers and the broader story around it were fascinating.

Compared to other Ruth Ware books

Typically I find Ruth Ware to be the master of settings. Her characters are often isolated somewhere and the setting itself feels almost as much a part of the story as the characters. Zero Days was a big departure from that style (even more than The It Girl, when I first started to comment on the shift). This book doesn’t have an sort of gothic or atmospheric feel to it the way her early books do. However, one consistency is that Ware loves to isolate her characters. While they are often physically isolated—in this story Jack is on the run (so not tied to a location), but she is still isolated, with few people she can reach out to for help and very little resources.

What didn’t work for me

Jack and Gabe as characters weren’t as developed as I like, though in the back half there is more context and development to their relationship and story. The book relies a lot on the plot and action to move it forward, and will appeal to readers who enjoy that style of book. Jack is sharp and well-equipped to handle a situation like this, but we see her make several errors in judgment throughout largely because she is still shocked and grieving the sudden loss of her partner.

What did work for me

One thing this book did well was build tension around the plot. I felt my body physically react to reading about life on the run, from sleeping roughly to grieving to physical injuries. While Jack is physically dealing with the challenges of evading arrest, the mystery itself heavily falls in the technology space. I wouldn’t consider this a psychological thriller—this was a straight thriller. This is different from what readers expect from Ware, and I think it will appeal to readers who are more interested in an action-based thriller rather than her usual style. For me, this was highly entertaining but lacked the magic of her prior work.

The culprit isn’t hard to figure out, and readers will surely get there well before Jack does. The rest of the book explores how Jack will get herself out of the situation she’s in and when she will put the pieces together. The ending sequence is exciting. With both of Ware’s most recent books delivering a different style of book than her first six (and even the most recent two are quite different from one another), I’m curious to see what Ruth Ware will do next and I certainly will be reading whatever it is!

About the Author | Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware grew up in Sussex, on the south coast of England. After graduating from Manchester University she moved to Paris, before settling in North London. She has worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language and a press officer. She is married with two small children, and In a Dark, Dark Wood is her début thriller.

Find her on twitter at www.twitter.com/ruthwarewriter, on facebook at www.facebook.com/ruthwarewriter or via her website – www.ruthware.com