The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware https://amzn.to/3vSEO8h Harkening to Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension and ingenious thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them—from Ruth Ware, the New York Times bestselling author who “is turning out to be as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime” (The Washington Post). Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize. But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death. A fast-paced, spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life, this novel proves yet again that Ruth Ware is the queen of psychological suspense.About the author Ruth Ware is an international number one bestseller. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Turn of the Key, One by One and The It Girl have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times, and she is published in more than 40 languages. She lives on the south coast of England, with her family.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the wake-up call of the Iron Lady. That's always mixing.

Kind of jumps me into the show where I'm just like, Wake up, Chris! It's the Iron Lady when she hits those beautiful notes. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys coming by. For 16 years, we've been bringing you the most amazing guests. Authors, Pulitzer Prize winners, CEOs, billionaires, all the smartest people in the world, and none of them are me. I'm just the idiot with the mic. and we have another amazing author on the show. She is

Prolific she's so prolific. I can't even say prolific right? I don't even know what that means But she's written numerous books and she's very popular Let's put it that way and her newest book is coming out May 21st 2024 it's called One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware. She joins us on the show and she'll be talking to us about her newest, hottest book to fly off the shelves. She has worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language and press officer, before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex and on the south coast of England.

She's the number one New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, The Turn of the Key, One by One, The It Girl, and Zero Days. Welcome to the show, Ruth. How are you? Oh, I'm so good. Hearing that list of books, it did make me think, gosh, I am prolific. I read so many books. How did I do that? You have quite a few books and rave reviews on the on the amazon there so there you go thank you that's good to know i mean some of your books i think are over 50 000 reviews yeah yeah they keep ticking off it's amazing yeah it's just incredible fantastic that so many people have

read it i'm still trying to get over five on my book no i'm just kidding but no i mean a lot of yours 30 000 on the it girl 50 51 000 the000 in the woman in cabin 10, I'm sorry. And quite a few others on the other ones as well in the five digits. So congratulations. Give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? I'm on most social media platforms as at Ruth Ware writer. Same at across all of them.

I'm more active on some than others, but you can find me definitely on Facebook and Instagram threads, sometimes Twitter. And if you want to find out a bit more about me, I'm on ruthware.com. Very imaginative. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your new book, One Perfect Couple. So the premise for my new book is that my main character, Lila, is a scientist. Her boyfriend, Nico, is an aspiring actor, and he's sort of got to a bit of a crunch in his career. He comes home one day with this amazing make or break proposition. He's been invited to go on this brand new reality TV show. There's just one catch, which is that the premise of the TV show is that

it's for couples. So Lila is going to have to be dragged along too. And, you know, she's a bit reluctant, but she agrees to this because she, you know, she wants to be a supportive girlfriend. So they turn up on this gorgeous boutique desert island, you know, tropical seas, white sand, everything's perfect. Except maybe it's not. You can still smell the wet paint. The production crew seems to be a bit shonky.

And then on the first night, there's a horrific storm. The boat that the crew are all staying on is swept away. And the contestants are more or less left to fend for themselves. And as the tensions rise and the fresh water runs low, Lila realizes that somebody is playing this game to win. And the stakes are life or death. Ah, life or death. That sounds like the first time, that sounds like my first five marriages. I'm just saying there's quite a lot of relationships in this book, some more toxic than others.

So is there one perfect couple in the book or or is that a quote-unquote sort of winkety-wink? one perfect couple won't necessarily be the same couples that they all turned up in there might be a bit of jettisoning partners who are dead weight but the i suppose one of the themes of the book is what really makes a good relationship like how far are you prepared to go for your other half so it kind of works on several levels i hope there you go the and the stakes are life or death you know i'd watch this show can we get this on tv then one of the kirkus reviews said this is my most cinematic novel yet you know it makes the big screen that would be fun make an amazon thing i mean you know some of the times you watch that survivor show you know you really hate some people and you're like i wonder if something could befall them no that's dark people don't do that i'm just teasing i mean that basically is the premise of

the book to be fair it's kind of like what if there was this picture perfect reality tv show and then horrible things happen to all the contestants so you're maybe not the first person to plus there's always that couple that you know you secretly hate because they almost seem too perfect or you know they're full of shit because they're always posting you know you secretly hate because they almost seem too perfect or you know they're full of shit because they're always posting you know exactly what's going on behind the scenes of that relationship posting stuff on facebook putting out this pr and you're like i know them in real life they're at each other's throats at home there's this all that all that you know flu flu stuff they're posting on face oh we love we love each other. It's our 10th anniversary.

Yeah. Meanwhile, they haven't said sex in 11 years. All of that performative stuff is what you need to worry about. And that's, yeah, that's definitely one of the themes of the book. It's always the,

thou dost protest too much. It's, it's, they're like the preachers who, you know, call stuff out too much. And then, and then suddenly they catch them in some massage parlor.

Exactly. You're like, you seem awfully concerned about this telling the world how great your relationship is and a single people hate you and eventually you find out the truth and you're like what i thought they were happy so there you go tell us a little bit about you and your background how did you grow up what inspired you to become a writer how did you know when you finally you know you, you were like, hey, I'm going to do this writing thing and I'm good at it? Oh, gosh, big question. So, I suppose the first thing to say is I have always wanted to be a writer. Like, it's just ever since I was a little girl, I think honestly, right back before I really knew what being a writer meant, you know, I was kind of always making up stories. And my poor sister was always getting these kind of, you know, soap opera plots of all of our Barbie dolls. And, you know, I guess I wanted

to be a storyteller from a really young age. But it always felt, I don't know, it just felt like something that happened to other people. You know, we were just a really regular working family my mum was an accountant with the library system my dad worked in IT so it just felt like being a writer was something that you know other more special kind of somehow different people got to do and that was I guess that was a kind of that was a thought that sort of carried on throughout my teens and 20s and I was like writing stories and you know they that was a kind of, that was a thought that sort of carried on throughout my teens and twenties. And I, I was like writing stories and, you know, they started off as kind of little soundbitey things and then just got longer and longer until, you know, eventually I was writing these kind of enormous book length screeds. I didn't really show them to anybody.

I think I was really shy. My best friend, I let her read a few, but I just, other than that, I just kind of wrote them and then sort of just, you know, filed them under my bed. And it wasn't until I had kids that I realized basically this was kind of it. This was make or break. Like I had two really small kids. I had a baby and a toddler and I was about to go back to work at this, you know, pretty demanding job. And I suddenly realized if I don't find a way to make my writing pay, I'm not going to be able to keep it in my life. You know, I barely have time to wash my hair, let alone write novels. So I need to kind of make this earn its place in my life.

And that was what made me kind of get over myself and decide that I was going to put my writing out there, you know, risk rejection and try to get a literary agent. But yeah, I think if I hadn't had my kids, I'm not sure I would be here today. It's a weird thought. There you go. I was going to ask you, you know, you write things about murder thrillers, psychological thrillers, suspense thrillers. You seem to have some murder on the mind. Who hurt you as a child or was your kids just driving you crazy enough you started getting dark thoughts i'm kidding around

i feel like we've circled back to the you know to the preacher who's preoccupied with like why are you so interested in this mizwa um i don't know i mean i think a large part of it is most of my books on some level are about stuff that stuff that preoccupies me stuff that makes me wake up in the night and think oh thank god I'm not in that situation or you know what would I do or you know just stuff that like you know my book the woman in cabin 10 the core of that book is really about a woman who sees something and is not believed and obviously in the context of my book it's you know it's a big murder it's you know hugely dramatic she's risking her life and stuff like

that but actually the the core fear of going to the police or going to you know authorities with something true that you have seen and them dismissing you because of not what you saw but who you are I think that's something that a lot of people worry about you know that's a fear that a lot of us have in common and I think that's maybe why that book struck a chord you know murder is a fun way of kind of setting the reader a puzzle and you know looking at some bigger themes but fundamentally I think I'm actually not that interested in the murders and the murderers in my book what I'm really interested in is the kind of eternal question of what happens when something extraordinary happens in an ordinary life you know I think we've all had one event

in our life that just dropped into our existence and kind of just changed us as a person and how the ripples of that play out. And I think that's really what I'm exploring in my books. There you go. Your build is the queen of psychological suspense. And this is a build that is also hearkening to Agatha Christie's classic. Did you have any inspiration from Agatha Christie novels or was there any other author that inspired you to write? In general, I love Agatha Christie. And I think she was one of the first kind of adult crime writers that I read. And I think, you know, reading her books at such a formative age, I was in my teens when I sort of read most of her novels.

I think they just really kind of imprinted on me what a perfect crime novel looks like you know you want you want a whodunit you want a puzzle you want if not a traditional detective because most of my characters are they're just regular people you want someone who's kind of following that breadcrumb trail of clues and then at the end of it what I think Christy does so well and what I love about her novels is she reveals the solution and you have that kind of moment of everything clicking into place where you go oh of course I should have guessed it she gave me all of the clues you know I should have figured this out but I didn't and that's what I

try to do in my books the problem is crime readers are incredibly good you know they read a lot of crime they're very good at spotting red herrings you're not going to be able to pull the wool over people's eyes all of the time but I think one by one is in some ways it's a really Christy-ish book because it's you know it's got that super Christy-ish trope of sending a disparate group of characters away to a you know an isolated island and then kind of picking them off one by one which is you know what she did in her masterpiece and then there were none but in other ways I think it's maybe a bit less christyish than some of my books because it's not a traditional whodunit you know from very early on that it

there so the book opens with two characters fighting for their lives. And you know that one of them is going to die. But kind of, it's more of a how do we get to this point than a whodunit. So in that respect, I think it's maybe a bit less Christy-ish than some of my other novels. But definitely, I draw a lot of inspiration from her and I love her settings and her plots. There you go. Five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them. inspiration from her and i love her settings and her plots there you go a couple's five couples trapped on a storm swept island as the killer stalks among them and and yeah you're right that

scenario putting you on an isolated island and stuff gives you that high tension gives you that gives you it gives you all that going on where you're just like or you know it is it is here i would build a raft and leave well they may try that i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give any spoilers It is here. I would build a raft and leave. Well, they may try that. I'm not going to give any spoilers. I would call someone. Anyway, they probably can't call anybody out.

So this is the thing. Because it's a reality TV show, obviously they have all of their electronic devices taken away. That's kind of standard for reality TV. Because they want the contestants offloading and talking to each other not you know phoning up their mom and saying oh so he's been mean to me you know they want it all on camera so that was really convenient from my point of view i was like this is perfect you know this this works for my plot they do have a radio but it has yeah that's that's a plot point so i'm not going to say too much about that yeah they did they definitely do try to call for help do you ever have from you know you mentioned

a lot of psychological and suspense readers you know they read a lot of these books you know and sometimes if you have that relationship with a person in your life you they kind of look at you with one eye open when they sleep because you watch too many csi shows do you find you find you have trouble with your relationships where people are like i should keep an eye on you you're right a lot maybe not in terms of do you mean i'm gonna murder them or just you know i might put them in a novel you seem to be really good at it yeah i'm not i don't i hope i may you know maybe people are gonna call in and say i've never liked the look of her she She's quite suspicious. I hope that my dearest and dearest don't think that I'm going to murder them.

If I was your brother, I'd just be like keep an eye on her. I'm not telling you that. Yeah, keep an eye on that one. I will say, if anything suspicious ever does happen in my life, I'm absolutely sunk because my Google search history is just the most, you know, it's full of five ways to dispose

of a body. And, you know, it's full of five ways to dispose of a body. And, you know, it's heroin detectable after death and all these kind of murder weapons with a syringe, you know. So should something ever happen in the vicinity, I will be going down for sure. You know, that might be a book there. I don't know if someone's done a book on that, but that might be a book right there. A writer who gets caught up in a murder and they check her internet history and they're like, you did. Yeah, you definitely did it. There's actually, there's a kind of pre-Google version of this. Dorothy L. Sayers did a Lord Peter Whimsey novel called Strong Poison, which is about a writer who's researching poisons and then someone is killed exactly.

Someone she knows is killed by exactly the method that she's just been researching and of course she ends up being convicted of the crime so yeah let's hope that's not me that's why i always clear my browser history people but they all know it you you know you have to use a vpn and all that it's all it's all the central kind of source yeah you know a little bit more about what's going on than this i did so i did research some of this for my previous novel zero days which is a tech novel and is all about you know secure communications and how much does big brother really know about you and the answer is an awful lot you should be careful yeah i love people who are always like i don't use my real birthday online it fools the system i'm like no one's

fooled dude does it though? Does it really fool? There's huge companies that buy your credit report. They know everything about you. I don't need, you know, I just figure half the world knows my social security number at this point because so many of these companies have been hacked. So I just gave up a long time ago. You're just all out there.

You're like, take my credit card details. Take my identity. It's fine. I just publish my passwords online You're like, take my credit card details. Take my identity. It's fine. I just publish my passwords online. I figure, what the hell? Yeah, just that's one way to be, I guess. Just let it all hang out. I'm like, yeah, just log in the account.

I'll give you the two-factor identification password. Some of the characters in the book, do you want to tease out a little bit about them and why you chose them and design them? I'm really fond of my main character, Lila. She's a scientist, and it's the first time that I've put a scientist into one of my books. Normally, I kind of go for people who are a bit more. I've had a writer in my books. I've had a journalist. I've had someone who's working for local government.

I had a tarot card reader once. That was quite fun to research. But my husband is a scientist. he's a virologist. And for years, he'd been saying to me, oh, you should write a pandemic novel, you know, we're due the next big pandemic, because, you know, influenza scientists have been saying this for years, there's always one every 50 years, we had one in 1918, we had one in 1965. And I was I was like oh nobody wants to read about that and then of course Covid happened and now I'm like definitely nobody wants to read about that now the pandemic novel has gone right under the radar but I did it did make me think actually

having a scientist as a main character is quite unusual for the kind of books I write and you know I have sort of quite unique access to him in terms of being able to ask him about his job. And, you know, you pick up a fair bit by osmosis. And I also started to think about the fact that in a way, scientists are actually quite similar to detectives. You know, they both have that commitment to the truth, really. You know, they're out there asking the difficult questions,

gathering evidence trying to figure out what the evidence is showing them and facing up to that whether it's the answers that they want or not and that's kind of those are the qualities that I tried to kind of imbue in Lila you know I gave her I gave her a bit of scientific curiosity a bit of scientific rigor and I think all of that makes her quite a good detective in terms of figuring out what's really going on on the island and who is actually out to betray their fellow contestants. There you go. Does your husband make his own coffee or tea? Actually, not only does he make his own coffee, he actually has his own coffee beans because we don't like the same type of coffee so this could all be coming back to your premise about crime writers being inherently

untrustworthy watch him at night i bet he's got one eye open he's seen some of your google searches over your shoulder he's absolutely the thing about crime writers that is we do get it all out onto the page so i think actually we're very chill people usually to live with and to know there you go you know we just if we've got a gripe we just write you into our book and kill you there that's so that's my version i'm sticking to it there you go we we have in fact we were talking about this earlier this week with another novelist the sorry we have other novels on the show we cheat that's okay but one of the prolific authors we have on the show she has about 50 or 60 maybe 70 books at this point and she's been on she comes on about every

six months wonderful gal and i'm trying to think of her name um but she's she's really mean if you if you screw her over in life or piss her off you'll end up in her books and it will you know you'll probably end up murdered that's probably a great marketing ploy as well because all her friends will be reading her books to be like has she put me in this time do i need to check i'm always really nice to her when she comes on the show for obvious reasons the solid policy yeah always be nice to crime read it right terrible things to you make your own coffee so there you go any final tease outs for the book that you want to give to people as we go out i would just say it's probably you don't need to enjoy reality

tv to have read it and in fact i wasn't a big reality tv fan before i wrote it although i sort of became one in the process of researching it but i think it's a really fun book to read if you've watched a bit of reality TV. And part of the reason why I decided to write it was I became obsessed with the TV show The Traitors. Have you seen that? I think it's so there's US versions, UK versions and Australian versions. And I've only seen the UK versions, but I have been told that the connoisseur's version is the Australian version. And that's really good. But it's this brilliant reality TV show where you have contestants divided into traitors and faithfuls. And the idea is that the faithfuls are all working together, but the traitors are working against them.

And the faithfuls are trying to figure out who the traitors are. It's an amazing show to watch as a crime writer because it makes you realize how incredibly bad people are at detecting liars and frauds in their midst. So yes, I became obsessed with this. And you might see some fun little kind of nods to some of my favorite reality TV shows in the book. There's a, I think there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a game that you play. And that's, it sounds like what that TV show is based on. And I think it's called game that you play, and that sounds like what that TV show is based on. And I think it's called The Wolf or something, or something about the wolf. Oh, Ultimate Werewolf, maybe.

Is that it? I don't know if it's the same one that you're thinking of, but I play a game with my kids, which is called One Night Ultimate Werewolf. And it's basically, it's like villagers trying to figure out who is the werewolf and the werewolf lies. And it's really fun. And yeah, and it's like a little, you go around the room or something or, you know, you're trying to figure out in the thing. Yeah, I heard about that on TikTok once from some CIA podcast or something.

And one of those, you know, military thriller ones. And I was like, holy crap, that sounds like a hell of a game. It's really fun. It is really fun. It always ends up with you realizing that your family are just abominable liars and would deceive you at the drop of a hat. So it's maybe not something to play if you're feeling a bit fragile. You're like, oh, no. And always make your own coffee and tea.

That's my policy. I have two Huskies in my house, and I still make my own coffee and tea because I don't trust those little shits. Fair enough. They're Huskies. You can't trust them, ever. So there you go. Ruth, it's been wonderful and fun to have you on the show. Thank you for coming by.

Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs. Oh, it's been such a joy. Come say hello to me at ruthweare.com or find me on most social media platforms at ruthware writer there you go thank you very much for coming on the show thanks to ronis for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss linkedin.com fortress chris voss chris voss won the tiktok and all those crazy places on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and that should