NYT best-selling author Ruth Ware will discuss her latest crime novel in Frederick

BY LAURA DUKES

Special to The News-Post

United Kingdom based author Ruth Ware will be at Frederick’s Curious Iguana discussing her new thriller “Zero Days,” but she says she’s the one who might be most thrilled.

“Frederick sounds like a great place,” said Ware, who is based in the UK and will be visiting for the first time. “I absolutely love independent bookstores. I love all bookstores, but it’s such a labor of love.”

“Zero Days” was published by Simon & Schuster and will be released in the U.S. on June 20. It tells the story of a woman, Jack, who is a security expert. After Jack has a job go “comically wrong,” she is briefly arrested, Ware said Ware, and the protagonist then comes home to find her husband, Gabe, has been murdered.

The police are initially sympathetic to Jack, but she becomes increasingly treated as a suspect.

“She kind of has her own reasons for not trusting the police,” Ware said. Ultimately Jack decides to take matters into her own hands and goes on the run, with the intention of finding who really killed Gabe.

By doing so, “she puts an enormous target on her back,” Ware said.

The book is structured over an eight-day period, going down to day zero, hence the title.

Up until now, Ware said most of her books have been more traditional whodunnits and more action-based. “Zero Days” is more of a thriller, Ware said, with “a really kickass protagonist.” She also called Jack a regular person but with a highly unusual skill set that allows her to break into systems and buildings.

The character names Jack and Gabe came to her instantly. She wanted to show a reverse of more stereotypical gender roles. Though the husband and wife characters collaborate work-wise, it’s a marriage where Gabe’s role is more “staying home and making sure she has a hot meal,” Ware said.

She said many books are centered on men avenging their wives, and she wanted this to be more of an exploration of grief and how people

READING AND Q&A WITH AUTHOR RUTH WARE

When: 7 p.m. June 22

Where: Community Room at ERUCC, 15 W. Church St., Frederick Tickets: $29.99 includes one copy of the book and admission for two people. Purchase tickets through Eventbrite. Info: 301-695-2500, curiousiguana.com cope with the death of a loved one.

While Gabe is killed early in the book, later chapters contain flashbacks, leaving Jack thinking about what her husband meant to her.

The Curious Iguana will host a Q&A with the author, and Ware will read some excerpts from the book.

Ware considers her breakout book to be “The Woman in Cabin 10,” a murder mystery that takes place on a cruise ship. Others she really enjoyed writing include “The Turn of the Key,” which is set in a smart house that becomes possessed, and “The It Girl,” about a college student whose roommate is murdered.

Her writing career initially started with writing children’s books, though she had been reading crime novels since she was a teenager. Her inspiration to write thrillers began when she was having coffee with a friend, and the friend said she loved the idea of writing a murder mystery centered around “a hen party,” or a bachelorette party in the U.S.

Ware got the idea for her character’s profession by listening to lots of podcasts during the COVID-19 lockdowns and becoming interested in the dark web and “people with the skills of a bad guy but the ethics of a good guy. … I thought, I’d love to read a book with someone like that at the center,” she said.

Though it is still a work in progress, Ware is already in deep development of her next book which will likely be a reality TV show set on a desert island that goes horribly wrong.

Laura Dukes has written for The Frederick News-Post since 2013 as both a freelancer and staff writer. She lives in the Ballenger Creek area with her husband, son and twin daughters.