A review by eleanorfranzen
Zero Days by Ruth Ware

Highly enjoyable thriller about a woman who works as a penetration tester, breaking into companies in order to tell them about their security weaknesses. She does the physical breaking and entering, her husband does the cyber part, and they make a good team until he’s brutally murdered and she’s framed for arranging the hit. Naturally, she then has to go on the run from police and find out on her own what Gabe may have gotten into that ended up killing him. This reminded me a lot of the excellent A Bird in Winter by Louise Doughty, and in fact Laura reviewed them together, very thoughtfully; they do make a good pair. Zero Days is marginally pulpier, and I knew early on who the only (named) villain would turn out to be, although props to Ware for making that villainy complicated, more about stupidity and greed than pure evil. The best thing about it, apart from the brilliant blow-by-blow scenes in which Jack, our protagonist, uses a combination of social engineering and athleticism to get where she wants to go, is the surprisingly convincing portrait of grief. I say surprising because I don’t expect emotional verisimilitude from a thriller, but this really got me: Jack’s agony over Gabe’s horrible death is so raw and painful, even as she uses it to spur herself on. Also, there’s a happy ending. Terrific summer distraction fare if capable, engaging thrillers are your bag.