Speaker 1: Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked.
Speaker 2: By Reese's book Club.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking with the queen of the modern thriller, Ruthware,
Speaker 1: And I've got a little question.
Speaker 2: If you made your.
Speaker 1: Living telling stories about committing the perfect crime, what would
Speaker 1: you be googling?
Speaker 3: I mean, if I ever get investigated, I am absolutely
Speaker 3: going to prison, like forty years straight. It's all how
Speaker 3: long would it take a body to decompose under these circumstances,
Speaker 3: and what dostage of insulin would prove fatal? In more,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just appalling.
Speaker 1: There's something about a murder mystery that stirs something deep
Speaker 1: in us. I mean, how many of us were glued
Speaker 1: to our screens each week dissecting every glance and clue
Speaker 1: in the white lotus or big little lies, whether it's
Speaker 1: glamorous vacation gone wrong or a shadowy figure in a
Speaker 1: locked room. The mystery genre taps into our obsession with
Speaker 1: secrets and power and the thrill of not knowing who
Speaker 1: to trust. And when it comes to building that kind
Speaker 1: of tension on the page, no one does it quite
Speaker 1: like Ruth Ware. Ruth is the modern day master of
Speaker 1: the mystery thriller, loved by millennials.
Speaker 2: Say that three times fast.
Speaker 1: A New York Times bestseller, she's been called the Agatha
Speaker 1: Christie of our generation, but she's truly in a league
Speaker 1: of her own. Her psychological thrillers are so immersive that
Speaker 1: you'll forget it's the middle of the day and you're
Speaker 1: safe on the couch and nothing can hurt you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Her latest book, The Woman in Sweet Eleven, just hit
Speaker 1: shelves last week, and it's the long awaited sequel to
Speaker 1: The Woman in Cabin Ten, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: headed to Netflix soon. Here's the rundown on the pair
Speaker 1: of novels. Laura Lowe Blacklock has been through it like
Speaker 1: through it. A decade ago, her home was broken into
Speaker 1: and then her travel assignment aboard a luxury cruise ship
Speaker 1: turned into a murder mystery.
Speaker 2: Wrapped in a.
Speaker 1: Near death experience, she fights and claws her way to
Speaker 1: the truth behind the disappearance of the Woman from Cabin ten.
Speaker 1: And when we meet Miss Lowe and Sweet eleven, she's
Speaker 1: turned her trauma into a best selling book. Kind of
Speaker 1: meta and what do you know, another luxury journalism trip
Speaker 1: falls right into her lap, but instead of the open seas,
Speaker 1: she's now surrounded by opulence in a glittering Swiss chateau
Speaker 1: with very very dark secrets and maybe even a ghost
Speaker 1: from her past. In today's episode, we're diving into the
Speaker 1: magic of what it takes to craft the perfect murder mystery.
Speaker 1: And for someone who traffics in crime, Ruth is the
Speaker 1: loveliest person in real life. She's so charming and playful
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine that she's responsible for some of
Speaker 1: the most wicked crime stories of our generation. We're finding
Speaker 1: out what convinced Ruth to write her first ever sequel,
Speaker 1: how her character evolved across time and trauma, and why
Speaker 1: the scariest people aren't the ones lurking in the shadows,
Speaker 1: but the ones signing the checks. Get ready to unlock
Speaker 1: the mystery and maybe how to commit the perfect crime.
Speaker 1: Let's turn the page with Ruth Ware. Ruth, Welcome to Bookmarked.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here. You are the
Speaker 1: queen of thrillers, and specifically psychological thrillers, and the psychological
Speaker 1: thriller that has me in a choke hold recently. Is
Speaker 1: a specific celebrity scandal. I don't want to name any names,
Speaker 1: but if you were to make a modern day thriller
Speaker 1: out of a real life scandal, which one would you
Speaker 1: want to write?
Speaker 3: In all of my books, I'm kind of obsessed with
Speaker 3: the idea of the super rich, and I'm totally fascinated
Speaker 3: by the phenomenon of billionaires building these bunkers to get
Speaker 3: away from the rest of us. And I was recent
Speaker 3: in Hawaii, and of course Mark Zuckerberg's bunker over there
Speaker 3: is like massive local gossip. So I would love to
Speaker 3: set a thriller in a celebrities bunker, either after the
Speaker 3: end of the world has actually come, or maybe just
Speaker 3: when they think it's come. There'll be so much juicy
Speaker 3: material of you know, the billionaires and all their entourage
Speaker 3: kind of quietly melting down in this post apocalyptic world.
Speaker 2: That is such a fabulous answer.
Speaker 1: I feel like one of the thriller tropes that people
Speaker 1: love is rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, there's just something really fascinating about just having
Speaker 3: the level of wealth that means that you're completely untouchable.
Speaker 3: And I think however normal people start out, you can
Speaker 3: sort of see them getting weirder and weirder and weirder,
Speaker 3: the longer and the richer they are, And it just
Speaker 3: seems to be this kind of human condition that happens
Speaker 3: to you and suddenly you're, you know, pumping yourself full
Speaker 3: of REJUVENI eating serums and drinking your son's blood and
Speaker 3: you know, going to Mars or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes they end up on end of the
Speaker 1: world TikTok, and I did yesterday. They must have been
Speaker 1: overhearing me, and I saw that at Costco you can
Speaker 1: buy for sixty five dollars like enough food to last
Speaker 1: you for two.
Speaker 3: Months, oh like literally just a pack.
Speaker 2: Yes, do you do any end of the world prepping?
Speaker 3: I don't do it end of the world prepping, but
Speaker 3: I am a little bit of a prepper by nature.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I loved about our house
Speaker 3: when we bought it was that it had a pantry.
Speaker 3: And this was the thing I was most excited about
Speaker 3: out of the whole house. Didn't care about anything else.
Speaker 3: I was just like, it's got a pantry. And I
Speaker 3: love having a really well stocked pantry with like, you know,
Speaker 3: gleaming jars of preserved fruit. And I would say, at minimum,
Speaker 3: I probably have twenty four cans of tomatoes at any
Speaker 3: one time, So I don't. I don't think of it
Speaker 3: in terms of the end of the world, but I do.
Speaker 3: I like to think of my as a sort of
Speaker 3: a good hostess and nurturing person.
Speaker 1: I asked you an unhinged question and you had such
Speaker 1: a normal answer.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I think my ardes were.
Speaker 3: Quite unhinged as well, written down, quite a deep psychological
Speaker 3: rabbit hole of pinterest.
Speaker 1: Perfect pantry from Ruth Ware. I'm going to need a photo.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do you watch any thrillers on TV or film? Are
Speaker 1: there any movies that you would consider a masterclass in suspense?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: What a good question. I'm a TV addict. There's absolutely
Speaker 3: no point in being snobbish about where your stories come from,
Speaker 3: whatever the medium. If you are immersed in a gripping,
Speaker 3: moving story that I don't care where that comes from.
Speaker 3: At the moment, I'm watching Department Q on Netflix, which
Speaker 3: is really interesting and very thriller ish. It's got a
Speaker 3: little bit of a kind of slow horses vibe. But
Speaker 3: in terms of film, Gone Girl, I thought was a
Speaker 3: really good film adaptation of a really a book that
Speaker 3: was incredibly difficult to adapt, and they did an incredible
Speaker 3: job of it.
Speaker 1: It's funny because we just had Emily Henry on the
Speaker 1: show and she was obsessed with that book too.
Speaker 3: It would just changed the game so much for thrillers,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's so playful and it's so meta,
Speaker 3: and it opened up so many possibilities of, you know,
Speaker 3: ways to tell a story. It just felt really fun
Speaker 3: and adventurous.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Weight Lotus is as popular in
Speaker 1: the UK as it is in America, but everybody that
Speaker 1: watches White Lotus is trying to figure out who's going
Speaker 1: to die at the end, like who will be murdered.
Speaker 1: And as I was prepping for this interview, I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, Ruth must know who's going to die at
Speaker 1: the end of all of these TV shows. Is there
Speaker 1: a tell for you?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I actually I don't always get it right.
Speaker 3: I get it right more often in books, I think,
Speaker 3: because I'm a novelist myself, and so I see the
Speaker 3: tricks that the other writers are doing more I see
Speaker 3: how they're misdirecting. I think I find it easier to
Speaker 3: sort of put myself in the shoes of a book
Speaker 3: writer but actually film and TV, I'm more often surprised
Speaker 3: because I think it's not a medium that I ever
Speaker 3: work in, So I'm sort of much more just a
Speaker 3: regular punter turning up and being like, Wow, this is
Speaker 3: cool premise. What's going on? Yeah? No, we're pretty addicted
Speaker 3: to white Loaters over here as well. But I have
Speaker 3: not watched the fourth season, so please no spoilers.
Speaker 1: I won't say a thing, but it does sort of
Speaker 1: fall into your category of rich people behaving badly.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. One of the things I love about White Lotus
Speaker 3: and which I often returned to in my books, is
Speaker 3: the idea of a kind of a super luck setting
Speaker 3: that is also slightly nightmarish. And I kind of very
Speaker 3: much sort of pulled that from Agatha Christie and all
Speaker 3: of her you know, like Death on the Nile and
Speaker 3: Murder on the Orient express settings where she creates these
Speaker 3: what seemed to be incredibly luxurious settings and then sort
Speaker 3: of turns them into a kind of gradually tightening nightmare.
Speaker 3: And I think White Lotus does that really well as well,
Speaker 3: where you go to these incredibly enviable places and they're
Speaker 3: just filled with awful people and encroaching dead bodies.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned Agatha Christie because I heard
Speaker 1: in another interview that you said you always sort of
Speaker 1: wondered if she wrote Death on the Nile as an
Speaker 1: excuse to take a little trip down the Nile River.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious if you've done the same for any
Speaker 1: of your books. Have you ever followed any of your
Speaker 1: personal curiosities towards an exotic place or an outlandish place.
Speaker 1: Have you ever just walked in somewhere and thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: someone should die here.
Speaker 3: I would say I more often do it the other
Speaker 3: way around, unfortunately, which is that I write books about
Speaker 3: places that I'm intensely curious about but have never been.
Speaker 3: And of course, my you know, ambition when I start
Speaker 3: writing is that I will go, and then it hardly ever,
Speaker 3: seems to happen. So like The Woman in Cabin Ten,
Speaker 3: which is set on a luxurious cruise, I have still,
Speaker 3: you know, almost ten years on from that book, never
Speaker 3: been on a cruise. And my intention while I was
Speaker 3: writing it was one hundred percent to take a cruise,
Speaker 3: write it off as a tax deduction. Yeah. And One
Speaker 3: Perfect Couple was sort of similar. It's set on this
Speaker 3: sort of Maldivian island and I'd never been on a
Speaker 3: holiday like that, and I got to go to the Maldives,
Speaker 3: and I was so worried that I'd written this book
Speaker 3: and that I would have ended up making some awful
Speaker 3: mistake or something wouldn't be right. And in actual fact,
Speaker 3: almost I changed almost nothing. Almost everything was exactly as
Speaker 3: I had imagined it. But I did do exactly what
Speaker 3: you were describing, and that everybody else was on this
Speaker 3: beautiful island having this incredible time, and so I sort
Speaker 3: of walked around this island all week thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: if we were cut off for a few days, who
Speaker 3: would crack first?
Speaker 1: So you just said that the Maldives were exactly how
Speaker 1: you imagined it, which is wild to me, because like,
Speaker 1: what does your search history look like? How do you
Speaker 1: even imagine a place you haven't been when you're researching
Speaker 1: for these books?
Speaker 3: I mean, my search history is an absolute bloody battleground.
Speaker 3: Or I mean, if I ever get investigated, I am
Speaker 3: absolutely going to prison, like forty years straight. It's all
Speaker 3: how long would it take a body to decompose under
Speaker 3: these circumstances, and what dosage of insulin would prove fatal?
Speaker 3: In what you know? It's just appalling, but I do
Speaker 3: try to intersperse it with you know, tax for writers
Speaker 3: and things, just in case someone from the government is watching.
Speaker 3: But no, I mean I watched documentaries and you know,
Speaker 3: read things and leaved through travel brochures. I don't find
Speaker 3: it super hard to imagine myself somewhere else. Lots of
Speaker 3: the details that I put in were correct, but there
Speaker 3: were two that I one that I didn't think of
Speaker 3: and one that I just got wrong. And the one
Speaker 3: that I didn't think of was I didn't realize how
Speaker 3: worn the sea was going to be. You know, where
Speaker 3: I live in Sussex in the UK, even in the
Speaker 3: height of summer, the sea is freezing. You walk in
Speaker 3: and you got is so cold. And I knew that
Speaker 3: it would be warmer in the Indian Ocean, but I
Speaker 3: wasn't prepared for how warm it was. And I do
Speaker 3: really vividly remember that shock of walking into the sea
Speaker 3: and just thinking it's like a hot top. It's like
Speaker 3: it's really really warm. So that went into the book,
Speaker 3: that moment where my character wades into the sea and
Speaker 3: has this shock that it's kind of it's really warm.
Speaker 3: But the thing that I got flat out wrong was
Speaker 3: I put monkeys into the book because I wanted that
Speaker 3: kind of screech, you know that they make in the night,
Speaker 3: that sort of atmospheric sound. And of course monkeys don't
Speaker 3: really swim, so it turns out there aren't any monkeys
Speaker 3: on those little islands. But what there are, which is
Speaker 3: even more atmospheric, is bats, these enormous fruit bats. So
Speaker 3: the monkeys had to go, but the bats came in
Speaker 3: to be spooky in their place.
Speaker 1: Sort of in our hearing, you talk about the specifics
Speaker 1: and the details that you're researching, like, I can only
Speaker 1: imagine writing a page could take so long when you're
Speaker 1: researching all these details in it. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I've always loved books is I feel like they're a
Speaker 1: portal to a place I've never been. But I've never
Speaker 1: considered that they're also a portal for the writer. And
Speaker 1: now I'm hearing that from you.
Speaker 3: It's always the smallest things that the hardest to research
Speaker 3: as well. It's never the big things, the things that
Speaker 3: you think you know when you start writing, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll need to consult somebody about that. It's always the
Speaker 3: tiny little details, like how long would it take to
Speaker 3: get from A to B? Or would this really small
Speaker 3: plot point be plausible? And there's the stuff that you
Speaker 3: just don't know. And until I went to the Maldives,
Speaker 3: it didn't occur to me that there wouldn't be monkeys,
Speaker 3: And I would never have googled that. It hadn't occurred
Speaker 3: to me to google, do the Maldives have monkeys? But
Speaker 3: researching is also a huge source of inspiration. You know,
Speaker 3: I will get completely lost down Google rabbit holes and
Speaker 3: Wikipedia rabbit holes and find out just fascinating stuff that
Speaker 3: it never occurred to me to put in a book.
Speaker 3: Not even always while I'm researching. Often I would just be,
Speaker 3: you know, listening to a podcast or going about my
Speaker 3: day to day chatting to a friend, and they'll say
Speaker 3: something that will make me think that could be a
Speaker 3: plot point. And I always think if I'm fascinated by something,
Speaker 3: it's hopefully a good indication that the reader might find
Speaker 3: it intriguing as well.
Speaker 1: I'm getting sort of I don't know what the word is,
Speaker 1: but almost like sparkly thinking about your imagination. I've always
Speaker 1: heard that as we get older, like our imagination could decrease,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like yours has just grown. Is there
Speaker 1: anything that you do to practice it or it just
Speaker 1: comes naturally to you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. That's an awful idea that it
Speaker 3: might decrease. Wow, now I'm going to feel like, is
Speaker 3: my imagination as strong as it used to be? I
Speaker 3: think I have a super visual imagination, which is interesting
Speaker 3: because I have a number of writer friends who have
Speaker 3: that thing, which I can't remember what it's called, but
Speaker 3: it's basically where you have no visual imagination at all.
Speaker 3: Like if someone says the word apple to you, you
Speaker 3: know the concept of an apple, but you don't picture
Speaker 3: an apple in your head, right, Whereas when I an apple,
Speaker 3: I see an apple. So I think that really helps
Speaker 3: when I'm writing. I literally see the scenes kind of
Speaker 3: playing out in my mind's eye, and in a way,
Speaker 3: that makes it much easier to write them, because you know,
Speaker 3: you just you're describing in a way what your imagination
Speaker 3: is providing. It also means that I quite rarely have
Speaker 3: continuity errors and things in my books, so there's copy
Speaker 3: Editors often spent a lot of time saying she was
Speaker 3: actually on the left of the room, and now she's
Speaker 3: on the right, and she seems to have teleported, and
Speaker 3: that mostly doesn't happen for me because I'm sort of
Speaker 3: seeing it in my head.
Speaker 1: There's something called synesthesia, which Pharrell has, where you can
Speaker 1: see colors.
Speaker 2: I feel like we.
Speaker 1: Need to coin a term for whatever this gift is
Speaker 1: that you have.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a really vivid imagination. And that's
Speaker 3: all my teachers used to say on my parents' evenings.
Speaker 3: Whenever my mom came in, they'd be like, well, she
Speaker 3: certainly has a very vivid imagination in a way that
Speaker 3: maybe didn't sound like it was a complete But I
Speaker 3: love having a vivid imagination, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it's part of what makes reading so pleasurable, is just
Speaker 3: entering another world and it's so rich and exciting, and
Speaker 3: it's why I love writing as well. You know, writing
Speaker 3: is like reading on steroids.
Speaker 1: Well, your new book, The Woman in Sweet eleven has
Speaker 1: been out for a week now, and you've called it
Speaker 1: a love letter to everyone who wanted more, which I love.
Speaker 1: You said you didn't plan to write a sequel, but
Speaker 1: your fans convinced you. I'm curious why you were so
Speaker 1: hesitant to continue those stories because that book was such
Speaker 1: a hit.
Speaker 3: I think I've always been slightly kind of hesitant of
Speaker 3: writing sequels to any of my books, and it's I
Speaker 3: suppose it's for two reasons. One, it's sort of One's
Speaker 3: a kind of technical reason, which is, you know, I
Speaker 3: always write about just regular ordinary people. I don't write
Speaker 3: about police officers or you know, forensic experts or whatever,
Speaker 3: and so it's quite hard to explain why a regular,
Speaker 3: ordinary person would keep encountering crimes. You know, you sort
Speaker 3: of get that murder she wrote effect where every time
Speaker 3: Jessica Fletcher opens her front door, there's a corpse. So
Speaker 3: part of it is just a kind of plausibility angle.
Speaker 3: But part of it is because my characters go through
Speaker 3: so much in my books. You know, their physical danger
Speaker 3: gets absolutely beaten to a pulp, you know, frozen, half drowned,
Speaker 3: gas lit, psychologically destroyed. So I sort of feel at
Speaker 3: the end of it like they basically deserve a break.
Speaker 3: And I know with most of my characters that is
Speaker 3: exactly what would happen. They would finish the book, they
Speaker 3: would go back to their regular, ordinary lives with an
Speaker 3: enormous sigh of relief, and nothing ever happened to them again.
Speaker 3: And I feel like I kind of ought to respect that.
Speaker 3: But there are characters in my book who I don't
Speaker 3: feel that is true of, who would probably might not
Speaker 3: avoid danger so much as kind of run towards it.
Speaker 3: I've written a few characters like that, people who would
Speaker 3: seek out trouble.
Speaker 1: That's like every boyfriend I've ever had see.
Speaker 3: I keep those characters fairly in my fiction. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was the genesis really of Sweet eleven. Was a
Speaker 3: character and it's not low who would not be able
Speaker 3: or willing to stay out of trouble, but it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because you said my fans convinced me to
Speaker 3: write a sequel, and I don't think that was true,
Speaker 3: because people have been begging for sequels for lots of
Speaker 3: my books over the years, and I'm very selfish. I
Speaker 3: write exactly what I wanted to write. I think it
Speaker 3: was more they're wondering about what would happen next and what,
Speaker 3: you know, what all the characters would be up to.
Speaker 3: Made me start to wonder and made me selfishly want
Speaker 3: to find out. I'd say they didn't convince me so
Speaker 3: much as they lit us. Fuck.
Speaker 2: That's cool to hear, and I don't find it selfish.
Speaker 1: There's actually this music producer named Rick Rubin, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Creative Act that I love. He
Speaker 1: says that in order to have great success, you have
Speaker 1: to do exactly what you are inspired and creative about.
Speaker 3: I love that. I'm going to type that out and
Speaker 3: put it above my desk.
Speaker 2: You would love the book. Yeah, it's a great book. Ruth.
Speaker 1: You said something that I was so inspired by. I
Speaker 1: have to ask you to expound on it. You said
Speaker 1: that children aren't often seen as the death of creativity,
Speaker 1: but motherhood gave you bravery, and you actually don't think
Speaker 1: you would have been published, especially your first book, had
Speaker 1: you not had kids. That is not something we hear
Speaker 1: very often. What did you mean by that.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it comes back to the idea of
Speaker 3: selfish Really, I'd written for years, ever since I was
Speaker 3: a teenager. I'd written Burke after Burke after Burke, and
Speaker 3: just I wrote them for me and I just ended
Speaker 3: up putting them under the bed at the end of
Speaker 3: the day because I kind of I couldn't bear to
Speaker 3: be rejected. I didn't think they were good enough. And
Speaker 3: in my twenties I went to work in the book industry,
Speaker 3: which was incredible because I got to work with all
Speaker 3: these amazing writers, but it made my kind of stage
Speaker 3: fright about writing even worse. And then I had my
Speaker 3: second baby and I was on maternity leave, and I,
Speaker 3: you know, I was a bit more confident as a
Speaker 3: second time mum, and I just had this idea for
Speaker 3: a book that I really wanted to write, and I
Speaker 3: felt excited about getting home and writing this book. And
Speaker 3: then I suddenly thought, as soon as I got back
Speaker 3: to work, I'm not going to have time to do this.
Speaker 3: And I thought, the only way I'm going to be
Speaker 3: able to keep this thing that I love in my
Speaker 3: life is if I put my big girl pants on
Speaker 3: and write a book that I sub to agents and
Speaker 3: try to get a publishing deal for. And if I
Speaker 3: can earn enough money from this book to pay for
Speaker 3: a bit of extra childcare, I can keep doing this.
Speaker 3: It's maybe one morning a week while they're in nursery.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what I did. And I sent it
Speaker 3: out to agents and it got rejected around the houses.
Speaker 3: And if that had happened five years ago, I would
Speaker 3: crawled back into my shell and gone, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm clearly not good enough. But it was that kind
Speaker 3: of use it or lose it thing where I thought,
Speaker 3: if I don't find a way to keep this thing
Speaker 3: in my life, I'm going to lose it. And I yeah,
Speaker 3: carried on yeah, and eventually found the woman who is
Speaker 3: still my amazing agent today. So yeah, absolutely, if I
Speaker 3: hadn't had my kids, I think it would have taken
Speaker 3: me probably much longer, if it hadn't been for that
Speaker 3: little selfish spark inside me saying no, I want to
Speaker 3: keep doing this and I have to find a way
Speaker 3: to make that happen.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I just keep thinking necessity as the mother of invention.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty inspiring story.
Speaker 3: I think that's the thing. Parenthood really pairs your life
Speaker 3: back to the bare bones of things that are important,
Speaker 3: particularly when you're kids are small and it's so all consuming.
Speaker 3: And it was that moment when I was about to
Speaker 3: throw out my writing and I thought, no, this is essential,
Speaker 3: This is essential to who I am, and I have
Speaker 3: to keep it.
Speaker 1: What do your kids think of what you do for
Speaker 1: a living. Do they know that mom writes about murder?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeah they do. I grew up in a family
Speaker 3: where being a writer was such a weird, exotic thing,
Speaker 3: and they've grown up with the complete opposite. It's just
Speaker 3: of course it's the thing that mom does, you know,
Speaker 3: every day while they're at school, and of course when
Speaker 3: we go into bookshops on holiday, I'm always peering around
Speaker 3: the corner looking to see if they've got a translation
Speaker 3: of one of my books. That's just what you do
Speaker 3: when you're in venice or wherever. So I think they just, yeah,
Speaker 3: they find it completely normal and frankly, very boring, as
Speaker 3: most of us find up parents.
Speaker 1: If you were to tell an aspiring thriller author a
Speaker 1: piece of advice of like the secret sauce of a
Speaker 1: great thriller, what would you say?
Speaker 2: What makes it amazing?
Speaker 3: The one lesson that I took from when I was
Speaker 3: working in the book industry was that I read so
Speaker 3: many books and they were, you know, beautifully written, amazing descriptions, lyrical, poetic,
Speaker 3: but very often when I put them down, I felt
Speaker 3: no compulsion to pick them up. And I think suspense
Speaker 3: is the opposite of that. It's giving your readers a
Speaker 3: reason to turn the page. It's kind of hooking them
Speaker 3: through the page with questions. And I do an exercise
Speaker 3: where I look at the beginning of a thriller novel
Speaker 3: or a psychological thriller, and I ask the readers to
Speaker 3: look at how many questions the writer is asking and
Speaker 3: how many questions they are answering. And a good novel
Speaker 3: will have a kind of an overlapping rhythm of questions
Speaker 3: and answers. There isn't just the sort of big who
Speaker 3: done it question that's sort of pulling you through the novel.
Speaker 3: There'll be lots of little mysteries, intriguing things, drop breadcrumbs
Speaker 3: of information that make you want to find out what's happening.
Speaker 3: And there's a really good example of this in Gon Girl.
Speaker 3: I think it's about sort of two or three chapters
Speaker 3: in and Nick is being interviewed by the police about
Speaker 3: the disappearance of his wife, and he says at the
Speaker 3: end of a chapter, almost as this complete throwaway line,
Speaker 3: he says, that was the fourth lie I had told
Speaker 3: the police.
Speaker 2: I remember that line.
Speaker 3: It's an electrifying moment as a reader because you're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are the four lies? Why is he lying about
Speaker 3: something so trivial, and why is he lying to the
Speaker 3: police at all? Has you got something to do with
Speaker 3: his wife? So it's a brilliant example of a sort
Speaker 3: of a question that you're suddenly, And as soon as
Speaker 3: I read that, I was like, I'm not putting this
Speaker 3: book down until I know the answer to every one
Speaker 3: of those. Just a really good basic tip for any
Speaker 3: thriller writere is to just check has your reader got
Speaker 3: a reason to want to read the next chapter? Is
Speaker 3: there's something that you've given them that they must simply
Speaker 3: find out before they closed the book that night?
Speaker 1: And should people be writing more questions than answers.
Speaker 3: I think you need both. For a writer, a cool
Speaker 3: thing around the corner is the most delicious feeling in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For the reader, they don't know that something amazing is
Speaker 3: around the corner. They just know that you've bugged a
Speaker 3: lot of questions at them that they don't know the
Speaker 3: answer to, and it can get very confusing and feel
Speaker 3: very withholding. So I think it has to be a
Speaker 3: bit of both. There has to be some really big
Speaker 3: questions that kind of pull you through the whole novel.
Speaker 3: But a good writer won't keep people in suspense about everything.
Speaker 3: They'll do a kind of a question and an answer,
Speaker 3: and a question and an answer, and there'll be a
Speaker 3: little sort of yeah, a little rhythm going on.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of a rhythm.
Speaker 1: When I think about an interview, I actually picture it
Speaker 1: as a song. I think it has to crescendo and
Speaker 1: have a rhythm as well. And so it's very cool
Speaker 1: to hear that your book feels like it has rhythm.
Speaker 3: I love that. I don't know if I think if
Speaker 3: it is a song, but I do have a sort
Speaker 3: of mental graph in my head of the sort of
Speaker 3: yah and troughs of how I want the book to feel,
Speaker 3: and I want it to go up at the end,
Speaker 3: and I want there to be a real sort of
Speaker 3: slough in the middle. And yeah, every book's got a
Speaker 3: different shape, but I yeah, it's is so interesting to
Speaker 3: hear you talk about it from a kind of completely
Speaker 3: sort of nonfiction point of view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I feel hearing you talk about it
Speaker 1: from a fiction point of view. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the things I noticed about your books is that it
Speaker 1: seems like there's a lot of girls weekends gone wrong.
Speaker 3: Also about nightmarish work retreats. I think I just like
Speaker 3: putting people in horrible situations.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what it is about these tight female friendships
Speaker 1: and suspicion that kind of makes it a fertile ground
Speaker 1: for thrillers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's a great question. Often in my books,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of writing against my earlier books, if that
Speaker 3: makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I wrote in adut dot Wood, which was my
Speaker 3: first thriller and does center around what we call a
Speaker 3: hen party, what you guys call a bachelorette party.
Speaker 2: Will make a hen party that's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hen party is such a weird very much as
Speaker 3: Weekend Away Gone wrong. And then The Woman in Cabin
Speaker 3: Ten was a completely different book. Low is on a
Speaker 3: professional trip. It's sort of it's not that kind of
Speaker 3: toxic female dynamics sort of thing. But I felt really
Speaker 3: guilty when the press started to come out about in
Speaker 3: Adult dot Wood and talk about, you know, this dissection
Speaker 3: of toxic female friendship. That is not my experience of
Speaker 3: female friendship. You know, yes, we've all had a mean
Speaker 3: girl in our lives, but by and large, my female
Speaker 3: friends are incredible. That are some of the most important
Speaker 3: people in my life. I have friends that I've been
Speaker 3: friends with since primary school. And I felt incredibly guilty
Speaker 3: that I'd sort of done female friendship dirty in my
Speaker 3: first book. And so with the Lion Game, which was
Speaker 3: the reason with the Spoon Books Club I kind of
Speaker 3: revisited the topic in a way to try and redeem
Speaker 3: what I'd said earlier. So I created a group of
Speaker 3: incredibly close knit friends and made them, you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of ride or die friends who would give up
Speaker 3: anything for their in fact, which is the kind of
Speaker 3: the core of the book, is that they have done this.
Speaker 3: They've done a terrible thing that they can't talk about,
Speaker 3: and it has colored the rest of their lives. But
Speaker 3: what it hasn't spoiled is their friendship. And of course
Speaker 3: it's a thriller, so it all goes very dark. But
Speaker 3: I think in a lot of ways that book is
Speaker 3: my love letter to my female friends to say, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not necessarily going to bury a body for you
Speaker 3: at midnight, but I would, you know, I would go
Speaker 3: to the ends of the earth for you.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about what you said earlier. Actually,
Speaker 1: my first question about the billionaires, I think oftentimes in
Speaker 1: thriller or horror movies and books, the villain mirrors the
Speaker 1: social and political anxieties of the time. During the Cold War,
Speaker 1: you get these mutated creatures. You get mass slashers in
Speaker 1: the seventies, and for you, both of the villains.
Speaker 2: In these books. Are Billionaires?
Speaker 1: Was that a conscious choice about the time we're in
Speaker 1: or are your bad guys?
Speaker 2: A reflection and something.
Speaker 3: I think all of my books are a reflection of
Speaker 3: kind of my personal anxieties and sort of things that
Speaker 3: I see in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The Turn of the Key, for example, which is a
Speaker 3: novel set in this sort of nightmarish smart house where
Speaker 3: my main character is a nanny and she's been kind
Speaker 3: of constantly tormented by this tech that is just kind
Speaker 3: of get out of control. That was inspired by reading
Speaker 3: newspaper articles about this new phenomenon of digital abuse, where
Speaker 3: you know, one partner typically has control of all of
Speaker 3: the sort of household devices, and when the relationship starts
Speaker 3: to break down, they packing into their ex's home harb,
Speaker 3: listening to their conversations, spying on them through the cameras
Speaker 3: or whatever it is. And I'm also, you know, as
Speaker 3: someone who spends a lot of time on social media,
Speaker 3: several of my books have revolved around kind of social
Speaker 3: media and sort of you know the role that that
Speaker 3: plays in our lives. Yeah, the amount of information that
Speaker 3: we're happy giving to tech companies kind of in exchange
Speaker 3: for a free service. But I think. You know, wealth
Speaker 3: inequality is one of the most pressing topics of our age, right,
Speaker 3: you know, what does it do to people to have
Speaker 3: that much money and that little accountability. It's a really
Speaker 3: interesting question.
Speaker 1: It is a really interesting question. Are you ever inspired
Speaker 1: by people in your own life? Like is there a
Speaker 1: teacher from your kids' school that sort of secretly made
Speaker 1: it into one of your novels that we wouldn't know about.
Speaker 3: I try very hard not to ever put real people
Speaker 3: who I'm close to in my novels. I'm not above
Speaker 3: you know, sitting in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the
Speaker 3: couple next to me and thinking, Wow, that is a
Speaker 3: weird dynamic that's going straight into a book in a
Speaker 3: couple of years.
Speaker 1: So, Ruth, we've been talking about The Woman in Sweet eleven,
Speaker 1: but the book that started at all was The Woman
Speaker 1: in Cabin ten, and it is getting a film adaptation
Speaker 1: and Kiera Knightley is playing low. So I know, earlier
Speaker 1: in our conversation you said you don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with film or TV. But I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's so true, because this is happening and it's
Speaker 1: an amazing casting. I'm sure You're gonna have tons of
Speaker 1: fans flocking to see this. How are you keeping it
Speaker 1: fresh for people who already know the ending from reading
Speaker 1: your book and sort of the easter eggs and spoilers throughout.
Speaker 3: The answer is, I haven't had to do that. It's
Speaker 3: someone else's problem. It feels great to be able to
Speaker 3: sort of hand my baby over and say this is
Speaker 3: your problem, now you deal with it. No, I mean,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, it's been a real dream come true.
Speaker 3: The cast is absolutely beyond my wildest dreams. When I
Speaker 3: think they announced Kiera Knightly, first I must say to
Speaker 3: my agent, what the Kara Knightley? And she was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: Rtha's there's only one kiir and Nightly. And then as
Speaker 3: more and more names came out, I was just like,
Speaker 3: these people are all incredible. So yeah, the cast is
Speaker 3: absolutely just beyond what I ever would have expected. And
Speaker 3: the director, Simon Stone is incredible. He did the dig
Speaker 3: which I absolutely adored. It's a real If you have
Speaker 3: seen it, it's a really beautiful film. So I think
Speaker 3: it's going to be incredible. I think it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: if you've read the book, to be honest, I think
Speaker 3: it's just really interesting seeing someone else's perspective. And I
Speaker 3: know as a reader, you know, when you go and
Speaker 3: see a film of a book that you love, it's
Speaker 3: fascinating seeing how two people can read the same book
Speaker 3: and come up with such different interpretations. So I think
Speaker 3: that would be really fascinating people. I spent like two
Speaker 3: days on set and it was incredible but also a
Speaker 3: real kind of snapshot. But I just hadn't realized like
Speaker 3: how much work goes into a film. And I know
Speaker 3: that sounds hopelessly naive when I say it, but you know,
Speaker 3: a novel, of course, there's a lot of people who
Speaker 3: help with a novel. There's your editor, there's your designer,
Speaker 3: there's a person who makes it look beautiful. In production,
Speaker 3: there's a sales team who get it out there. But
Speaker 3: a film is just a whole other level. It is
Speaker 3: literally an entire vilege of people working to make something
Speaker 3: as beautiful and as brilliant as they possibly can, and
Speaker 3: to have that thing be your book just feels like
Speaker 3: the most incredible privilege.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm excited for you now. I have to
Speaker 1: tell you, when I was reading Sweet Eleven, I was
Speaker 1: casting in my own mind, if you could cast that
Speaker 1: adaptation tomorrow. I just need to know one thing, who
Speaker 1: would you cast as Marcus Weidman.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I don't dreamcast my books at all. Never, No,
Speaker 3: I really really don't. And I think a big part
Speaker 3: of that is because I have a really visual imagination.
Speaker 3: To me, the characters are so clearly who they are,
Speaker 3: I find it very difficult to map them onto real
Speaker 3: life people. It's funny. The one character who I did
Speaker 3: think about when I was writing was Marcus, and I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned in the book at one point that
Speaker 3: he has a kind of Donald Southern look to him,
Speaker 3: so that he was in my mind, and I think
Speaker 3: a big part of that was having seen him in
Speaker 3: the Hunger Games playing presidents now, and he looks very
Speaker 3: much how i'd imagine Marcus, very kind of very charming,
Speaker 3: but also very ruthless, with that sort of slight, unknowable
Speaker 3: edge of cruelty. But yes, unfortunately he is not available.
Speaker 3: So if anyone has any suggestions for who they were
Speaker 3: done key for, Sutherland is available. His son, Oh so true, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's probably not quite old enough. Maybe you could
Speaker 3: wear a gray wig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you've spent your life writing these twisty,
Speaker 1: turney endings for books. I am looking at you. You
Speaker 1: have so many of your books on your shelves. What
Speaker 1: has been the biggest twisted turn in your life?
Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent writing in a dut dart Wood. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: You know, when I wrote that book, I don't really
Speaker 3: know what I expected, but I think I thought I
Speaker 3: was writing this kind of weird little British book, like,
Speaker 3: who on earth has ever heard of a Hen party
Speaker 3: outside of the UK? Nobody? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: I was writing this weird little thriller that you know,
Speaker 3: my friends would read and my mother in law would buy,
Speaker 3: because she's incredibly supportive and she buys all of my books.
Speaker 3: I just had no expectations whatsoever. Like, obviously I hoped
Speaker 3: it would do well, but I just thought, you know,
Speaker 3: we'll sell a few copies, we'll have some fun, and
Speaker 3: I'll tell the twisty story. And then it just blew
Speaker 3: up beyond my wildest dreams. And ironically, as I was
Speaker 3: writing The Woman in Cabin ten, which made that book
Speaker 3: incredibly hard to write, because you know, the more I
Speaker 3: was sort of struggling with this kind of twisty plot
Speaker 3: that wouldn't quite pin down, and these characters that wouldn't
Speaker 3: quite behave the way I wanted them to in adt
Speaker 3: dot Wood was just you know, it was getting amazing reviews,
Speaker 3: It was getting you know, picked up on social media.
Speaker 3: People were saying lovely things about it. It was hitting
Speaker 3: the best seller list, and yeah, all of that made
Speaker 3: capin ten so hard to write. It was like blood
Speaker 3: out of a stone. But yeah, that book changed my
Speaker 3: life in so many ways, and I've ended up going
Speaker 3: places I could never have dreamed of in my wildest imagination, which,
Speaker 3: as we have established, is pretty.
Speaker 1: Well for anybody listening. I'm smiling very big. You can't
Speaker 1: see my smile, but that's really wonderful, Ruth. I love
Speaker 1: asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week. It's the
Speaker 1: title of our show, but it could be a weird fact,
Speaker 1: a fun quote, something that you've saved on Instagram or
Speaker 1: texted your best friend about.
Speaker 2: For you.
Speaker 1: I was thinking even maybe a luxury hotel or destination,
Speaker 1: because so many of those are in your books.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you've bookmarked this week?
Speaker 3: My kind of well, not guilty pleasure, because I don't
Speaker 3: believe in guilty pleasures. I think if it's giving you
Speaker 3: pleasure that I'm not hurting anyone else. That's great, So
Speaker 3: let's not say guilty pleasure. My pleasure is going to Spas.
Speaker 3: I absolutely adore going to Spas. And actually there's a
Speaker 3: spooky Spa scene in The Women in Cabin ten, which
Speaker 3: I won't spoiler for anybody. So that was the last
Speaker 3: text I sent to my sister was this Spa hotel,
Speaker 3: saying we should go.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have something bookmarked this week too. In celebration
Speaker 1: of the launch of Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, we're
Speaker 1: teaming up with Little Free Library to do a book
Speaker 1: drop for our July Pick Spectacular Things. Check out Little
Speaker 1: Free Libraries in your area and tag us on Instagram
Speaker 1: if you find one. Plus, if you do find one
Speaker 1: of our books, we snuck in a fun little treat
Speaker 1: just for you. Okay, now we're coming up on one
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts of the conversation.
Speaker 2: It is time for speed read. So here's how it works.
Speaker 1: I'm putting sixty seconds on the clock and I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you a series of rapid fire questions, so
Speaker 1: you have to say the first thing that comes to
Speaker 1: your mind, which I have a feeling you're going to
Speaker 1: be very good at So are you ready?
Speaker 2: Are you locked in?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I'm not ready, but I'll do my best.
Speaker 2: Okay. Three two one? A famous murder case that could
Speaker 2: have been a Ruth Ware novel.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, the mushrooms in the beef Wellington.
Speaker 1: You hear a scream at the end of a darkened hallway,
Speaker 1: run away or inspect it.
Speaker 3: I'll run towards it. It might be somebody in trouble.
Speaker 2: Favorite thriller novel to recommend to people.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is hard, too too, too, too many. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to say gone girl again. We've already discussed it,
Speaker 3: but it's it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: So you've killed a lot of characters, Ruth. Do you
Speaker 1: ever regret killing off the wrong one?
Speaker 3: No, by and large, if I had any regrets, it's
Speaker 3: probably not killing more of them.
Speaker 2: Is there a book that you'd wish you'd written?
Speaker 3: Louise Candlish's book Our House. I read that and I thought,
Speaker 3: I want to write an ending that makes the reader
Speaker 3: feel the way I just felt, and I think I
Speaker 3: did it. I won't say which book, though, I'll keep
Speaker 3: that secret.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that everybody is capable of murder under
Speaker 1: the right circumstances.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think anybody could kill if they really truly
Speaker 3: had to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, My last one is what character are you
Speaker 1: most like?
Speaker 3: This is a tough one. I guess there's quite a
Speaker 3: lot of me in Low Blacklot, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: there's a bit of me and all of my characters,
Speaker 3: even the baddies. I think they're like little voodoo dolls,
Speaker 3: little zombies that I stitch together, and the thing that
Speaker 3: brings them to life is a bit of me.
Speaker 2: Ruth. Thank you. You have been absolutely charming and marvelous.
Speaker 3: I have had the best time. Thank you for your questions,
Speaker 3: which I feel have given me an intellectual workout. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd so much fun.
Speaker 1: And if you want a little bit more from us,
Speaker 1: come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's book
Speaker 1: Club on Instagram serving up books, vibes and behind the
Speaker 1: scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe Roba y come
Speaker 1: say hi and df me And if you want to
Speaker 1: go nineties on us, call us. Okay, our phone line
Speaker 1: is open, so call now at one five zero one
Speaker 1: two nine one three three seven nine. That's one five
Speaker 1: oh one two nine one three, three seven nine.
Speaker 2: Share your literary.
Speaker 1: Hot takes, book recommendations, questions about the monthly pick, or
Speaker 1: let us know what you think about the episode.
Speaker 2: You just heard. And who knows, you might.
Speaker 1: Just hear yourself in our next episode, so don't be shy,
Speaker 1: give us a ring, and of course, make sure to
Speaker 1: follow Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your shows until then,
Speaker 1: see you in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production
Speaker 1: of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Its executive produced by Reese
Speaker 1: Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe. Production is by A Cast
Speaker 1: Creative Studios. Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schleid,
Speaker 1: and Darby Masters.
Speaker 2: Our production assistant is Avery Loftus.
Speaker 1: Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder are the executive producers for
Speaker 1: A Cast Creative Studios. Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are
Speaker 1: the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Kristin Perla,
Speaker 1: Kelly Turner and Ashley Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's
Speaker 1: book Club. Ali Perry and Lauren Hansen are the executive
Speaker 1: producers for iHeart Podcasts, and Tim Palazola is our showrunner.