The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
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The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Mystery

The Turn of the Key

Repeat author

by Ruth Ware

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Quick take

From the author of The Lying Game and The Woman in Cabin 10, a jumpy read that feels like putting together a puzzle.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Psychological

    Psychological

  • Illustrated icon, Whodunit

    Whodunit

  • Illustrated icon, Murder

    Murder

Synopsis

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Read a sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Turn of the Key.

The Turn of the Key

7th September 2017
HMP Charnworth

Dear Mr. Wrexham,

You have no idea how many times I’ve started this letter and screwed up the resulting mess, but I’ve realized there is no magic formula here. There is no way I can make you listen to my case. So I’m just going to have to do my best to set things out. However long it takes, however much I mess this up, I’m just going to keep going and tell the truth.

My name is . . . And here I stop, wanting to tear up the page again.

Because if I tell you my name, you will know why I am writing to you. My case has been all over the papers, my name in every headline, my agonized face staring out of every front page—and every single article insinuating my guilt in a way that falls only just short of contempt of court. If I tell you my name, I have a horrible feeling you might write me off as a lost cause and throw my letter away. I wouldn’t entirely blame you, but please—before you do that, hear me out.

I am a young woman, twenty-seven years old, and as you’ll have seen from the return address above, I am currently at the Scottish women’s prison HMP Charnworth. I’ve never received a letter from anyone in prison, so I don’t know what they look like when they come through the door, but I imagine my current living arrangements were pretty obvious even before you opened the envelope.

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Other books by Ruth Ware

Mystery
One by One
All the Colors of the Dark
Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter
The Ghostwriter
The Maid
When the Stars Go Dark
The Broken Girls
Still Lives
Like a Sister
Her One Regret
This Story Might Save Your Life
Redbelly Crossing
Pretty Dead Things
Mystery
View all
One by One
All the Colors of the Dark
Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter
The Ghostwriter
The Maid
When the Stars Go Dark
The Broken Girls
Still Lives
Like a Sister
Her One Regret
This Story Might Save Your Life
Redbelly Crossing
Pretty Dead Things