In “What Would You Do?” episodes, Brook and Sarah break down how they would react to different situations faced by the main character of a domestic thriller. This time, they take on Lo Blacklock in Ruth Ware’s 2025 release The Woman in Suite 11.
Discussed and mentioned
The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) Ruth Ware
The Woman in Suite 11 (2025) Ruth Ware
Related episodes
What Would You Do? The Woman in Cabin 10 (released September 6, 2022)
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. Are you ready for another What Would You Do? |
| Sarah | I am, and I am so excited about this one because it is a sequel to a What Would You Do book that we’ve already done. |
| Brook | Our very first, what would you do in fact? |
| Sarah | That’s right. So we are going to talk about The Woman in Suite 11, which was ah released earlier this year and written by Ruth Ware. And it features Lo Blacklock and many of the people we encountered in the first book, The Woman in Cabin 10. |
| Sarah | Before we begin let me do the usual spoiler warning. We are going to get into a lot of detail about this book and there is likely to be reference to death by suicide. So, if neither of those things interest you, then feel free to skip this one. |
| Brook | I’ll bring everyone up to speed. So, as Sarah said, this is a sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10. ah Lo Blacklock is back and she’s mostly recovered from her harrowing experience aboard the Aurora cruise ship. |
| Brook | And she’s now a mom of two living in New York with her husband, Judah. With the encouragement of her husband, she accepts an invitation to a luxury Swiss hotel owned by enigmatic billionaire Marcus Leidmann, hoping it will help her reboot her travel writing career. |
| Brook | But when she finds several people at the hotel who had also been on the Aurora, she gets concerned. Late one night, Lo receives a mysterious note asking her to come to Suite 11. |
| Brook | When she arrives, she’s confronted by Carrie, a woman who had been part of the sinister plot aboard the Aurora. Carrie claims to be Leidmann’s abused mistress and pleads for help to escape him. |
| Brook | As Lo attempts to help Carrie, she finds her own position increasingly precarious. Marcus is later found dead and suspicion falls on Lo due to her proximity, her interactions at the hotel, and her connections with other guests. |
| Brook | After being tricked and used in multiple ways, Lo eventually uncovers that Carrie and Marcus’s son Peter conspired to kill Marcus. In the end, before disappearing, Carrie gives Lo access to incriminating evidence, apparently so she isn’t blamed for the murder, and then Peter ends up taking his own life. |
| Brook | With the case closed, Lo returns home to New York, legally cleared, though emotionally scarred, and once again rocked by Carrie’s betrayal and manipulation. |
| Sarah | Thank you for that summary, Brook. That, I think, hits all of the high points and some of the low points of this book. |
| Brook | Absolutely. |
| Sarah | So, I will admit, Brook, that I have not read The Woman in Cabin 10 since we did our What Would You Do episode a few years ago. So, I appreciated the refresher that Ruth Ware provided. |
| Brook | Yeah, I will probably reference some of the comments that I heard directly from Ruth Ware because this summer I had the opportunity to go listen to her speak. It was part of her book release tour for The Woman in Suite 11. |
| Brook | um And she did mention to the audience that night, she said, if you haven’t read Cabin 10, you should still be able to read Suite 11. That was her intention. And I think she did a good job of that. In fact, I have thoughts along those lines that we’ll get to later. |
| Sarah | Let’s start with the first what would you do that I have written down, Brook, is ah if you’re Lo and you receive this strange invitation, would you even go? |
| Brook | I mean, when I think about her life, she’s got preschool kids at this point. She’s living in the U.S., and this is post-pandemic. So, things, you know, her life has changed a lot in many, many ways. Um I would probably not because I just think about what life is like when you have the little kids. Um But at the same time, her husband Judah is really encouraging. And she does want to get her feet back under her as far as her, um you know, it’s time for her to try to enter the workforce again. |
| Sarah | That’s right. Yeah, I mean, she talks about that she wrote a book after everything that happened on the Aurora and, um you know, made a ah bit of money from that. And that’s allowed her to stay home with the kids and and not really worry about work. |
| Sarah | But as they’re getting a little bit older and a little bit more independent, she’s maybe feeling that um she’s ready to to get back at it. So, yeah, I understand why she decided to go on the trip, but she, she didn’t really seem to do very much research into the destination or, or into the family. And, and she does talk about how Marcus Leidmann famously refuses to give interviews. And so there is not a lot known about him. The company is privately held. So, you know, they don’t have to do any of the public reporting that, ah that you would if you had, if you had shareholders. And she decides, you know, it’s a a couple of days away and I can see my mom on the way home. |
| Brook | Right. And you know that was something that was suspicious to me too, because this is like a hurry up thing. It’s presented as this ah opportunity to tour this new hotel that they’re opening in Switzerland. |
| Brook | And I would just imagine that this would be a much longer-term planning scenario. Like just something else fishy about the invitation. It’s not like in six months from now, we’re doing this event. It’s like in two weeks. So, ah another red flag. |
| Sarah | Yeah for sure for sure. But she goes and as you mentioned in the summary, she gets there and realizes that there are a lot of people who were there on the Aurora with her. And she doesn’t, don’t know, like, what what would you what would you think about that? |
| Brook | Yeah, we hear that you know some of her internal thoughts is she’s like trying to talk herself down. She went through such a terrifying situation on the Aurora that she talks about that she’s, you know, had to readjust her anxiety medication and she’s had some mental health issues because of it. But I don’t really think her actions portray that very well because I would be freaked out that all these players from the Aurora are all at this hotel together. |
| Sarah | But she’s there and there’s really not much that she can do about everybody else being there too. So, she just kind of treats it like this little reunion and is more or less happy to see them. |
| Brook | But then she gets this invitation late at night to go visit suite 11. Okay. So what would you do, Sarah? Would you just freshen your lip gloss and head on down to suite 11 at midnight? |
| Sarah | Now, she’s a reporter, and so she is curious by nature. So, it is understandable that she would go up to suite 11. But I don’t know if I would do it it in the middle of the night. |
| Brook | Yeah, agreed. And she is hoping to get an interview, a scoop, because we’ve, as we’ve discussed, Marcus Leidmann doesn’t give interviews, but she’s put the feelers out there to try to get him to speak with her. And so, I think she’s hoping that this is her opportunity ah but I would be extremely nervous. |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And she gets up there and it’s not Marcus, but Carrie. |
| Brook | Would you believe the story that Carrie starts spinning in this scene where she desperately needs Lo’s help? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. And she, she does believe it without really doing any double checking, right? Which I think for someone who’s a reporter is not, uh . . . you know, you always check your sources, right? So, uh, you know, she’s not following her professional rules. Um, But I think she feels so indebted to Carrie because of what happened on the Aurora. |
| Brook | The situation is that Carrie is kind of one of her captors, but then in the end, she helps Lo escape. So Lo feels extremely indebted to this person, really with her life. Really, she owes her life to Carrie in many ways. So, I think that is what puts her over the edge of thinking I’ve got to help her. But Carrie claims that ah Marcus Leidmann, who is quite elderly, is abusing her in many different ways and holding her captive because he has discovered her true identity as the person who did these terrible things aboard the Aurora. |
| Sarah | That’s right. So, Lo agrees to think about helping Carrie. She ends up having the opportunity to speak with Marcus Leidmann and get this scoop that she’s been hoping to get. ah But during their conversation, he reveals that he has been keeping tabs on her. So, Brook, would you remain at the hotel after realizing that he knows the names of her husband and her children and their ages? Like, he has done a lot of investigating into her life. |
| Brook | Right. I think when he mentions the children and their names, that would probably be enough to bare minimum, get me talking to someone else, like calling my husband, going over this scenario with him. |
| Brook | She’s a little wary of two of the other ah men for different reasons that are at the hotel. There’s Ben and there’s Cole. I could see myself breaking down and telling them, you’re not going to believe who’s here. Carrie is at this hotel. Because they were involved in the whole scenario on the Aurora. I just don’t see myself staying quiet at that point because I would just be fearful for my family and for myself. |
| Sarah | Yeah. And, and, you know, you mentioned she doesn’t get in touch with her husband and there are several opportunities that she has to do that and decides for various reasons not to even send him a message. |
| Brook | Right. |
| Sarah | And this is despite them having a seemingly very strong relationship and, I don’t know, I guess I, I, if someone was making a, not even a particularly veiled threat against my family, I feel like maybe I would warn my husband that, that this was happening ah and sacrifice this work opportunity, decide that, it you know, it just wasn’t worth um potentially harm coming to the people that she loves the most. |
| Brook | Several times she uses the excuse of the time difference to not contact Judah. And I’m like, you know, if you’re doing international travel, your spouse understands that they might get a call in the middle of the night. |
| Sarah | Mhmm. |
| Brook | But Carrie has this picture perfect, clearly very methodically considered plan. And it really comes down to the fact that Lo has a dual citizenship. She has obtained her American citizenship. She remains a citizen of Britain. And so she has two passports. And, uh, Carrie decides that they look similar enough to one another that she could just travel on Lo’s other passport. And she explains this grand plan to Lo. I mean, what would you think, Sarah? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I wrote this down as well, Brook, as like, would you agree to Carrie’s plan? And yes, she feels in debt to Carrie. And yes, Carrie seems to be in a very tight spot. |
| Sarah | And, you know, I don’t know. I, I just don’t know if I would be prepared to risk my passport ah for this plan. But she does agree to it. And the two of them make their way to ah the Eurostar so that they can get back to the UK. |
| Brook | It works out and they pull it off. |
| Sarah | That’s right. So now they’re both in the UK, Carrie’s plan was a success. Would you now part ways with her or would you agree to go to another hotel with her? |
| Brook | This is on my list as well, Sarah. Carrie convinces her that her prize, I guess, for doing this plan with her is going to be this really expensive dinner and night on the town. |
| Brook | And I was thinking, heck no, I’m not going anywhere with you. I want my passport back. You go your way. I’ll go my way. But they do. She goes out. They have a big dinner. And then they are going to spend allegedly one night together in a hotel. And she uses the excuse her mom isn’t expecting her for another day. and I was like, what the heck? If you show up a day early, your mom’s going to be very happy to see you. |
| Sarah | I know, I know, exactly. You’ve been living abroad, um you’re not going to throw your mom off. And the next morning, Marcus Leidman and his son Peter arrive at the very hotel that they’re staying at. but |
| Brook | Right. And so my thought here is what would you do, Sarah? Would you finally start to question Carrie’s honesty? |
| Sarah | Yeah, she says, well, it’s a coincidence. But there are a lot of little boutique hotels in the UK. And I would find it very difficult to believe that of all of them, Marcus Leidmann and his son just happened to arrive at the one that they’re staying at. |
| Brook | Yeah. So this is about, I mean, I’m not counting specifically, but probably at least the fourth or fifth big thing that could have tipped Lo off to Carrie not being completely honest. And we’re going to have more, everybody. But this one is a biggie to me. |
| Brook | Especially considering that they’re supposed to be hosting this event at the hotel that they own. And they’ve taken it upon themselves to leave that and come here, something’s up. |
| Sarah | Exactly. Exactly. Because Lo left that hotel in Switzerland ah a day earlier than she was meant to. So, all the other guests, all the people that she knew from the Aurora, they’re all still there enjoying themselves. Except we learn, and I don’t think she ever follows up with Ben about this, but we learned that Ben was on the Eurostar as well. |
| Brook | Exactly. This is a thread that is never tied up. um And so we don’t know what Ben was doing on the train. |
| Sarah | So, so while they’re at this hotel, Carrie is hiding out, right? The room is reserved in Lo’s name. Lo goes down for the meals, brings up a little bit of food for Carrie or Carrie orders room service. But as far as anybody knows, Carrie does not exist and is not at the hotel. And this proves to be an issue because Marcus Leidmann actually ends up dying. |
| Sarah | The police come to question Lo. Carrie hides in the bathroom. And, you know, Lo offers her um explanation, which was she heard a scream. It was the um room service coming in to to drop off breakfast that Marcus had had ordered, finds him drowning in the tub. And so Lo goes to try and help save him. And ah she and Peter um are the ones who who, you know, remove him from the bath. And so she has to provide this to the police. She doesn’t really think that there’s anything more to the story. |
| Brook | Exactly. I did wonder though, would you have, at the time that the scream occurs, Lo has kind of decided I’m out of here. I am cutting my losses. Not because she’s particularly ah suspicious of Carrie, but I think she’s just ready to part ways. ah And then she hears the scream. Would you have gone to save the this person that is in danger or would you have just cut and run. |
| Sarah | Yeah, I wrote this down as well. Would you go and check? I, I mean, again, going back to she’s a reporter. So ah we have to maybe forgive her a little bit more curiosity than then we might have. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. |
| Sarah | But you’re right. She was yeah just at the time that she hears the scream. She was calculating how much time she had before she needed to get in a cab to take her to the train station, thinking that within an hour she was going to be on her way to see her mother. |
| Brook | Yes. |
| Sarah | Um, so it turns out that the police realized that she’s been telling a few fibs, uh, particularly about why she left Switzerland so early. She had said, “well, my mother has had a fall, so I need to leave”. When in fact her mother hadn’t yet had a fall. The police end up um taking her in for questioning. |
| Brook | So Lo’s story doesn’t really line up. And this also is impacted because this hotel, this very ritzy hotel has ah memory on all the keypads and the door locks. So they can tell when each door is open and closed and and that causes her some problems as well. During this time, she does finally talk to Judah back in the United States, and she tells him, no, absolutely not. Do not come here. Would you do that, Sarah? |
| Sarah | Well, at this point, she still believes that the police will realize that she hasn’t done anything wrong. Right. So, you know, her um alert level isn’t very high. I don’t think it’s high enough. I think it was around this point where I was like, oh, Lo, but you have been so set up. How can you not realize? |
| Brook | Exactly. Maybe that’s the case. It’s like as a reader, you could you have much more tension than ah Lo apparently has. and But she does. She tells her husband, just stay. I’ll take care of this. You stay with the children. |
| Brook | He does, however, then call Ben and Cole, who we referred to earlier. And they’re able to ah help provide counsel for her, which she eventually needs because she does get taken into the police station. |
| Sarah | Yeah, that’s right. He does get her ah released, though, I think on bail. She gets back to the hotel and Carrie is nowhere to be seen. |
| Brook | And Lo still thinks, well, you know, fly away, little bird. I hope you have a nice life. Again, this is another opportunity for her to start so to suspect that Carrie, this mastermind of the on the Aurora, is up to no good, but she doesn’t. She still trusts that she just decided that she needed to leave. |
| Sarah | I think it was at this point where I was just like, oh, I don’t know if I can read any more of this. |
| Brook | Yeah, it kind of swings back, but this is a hard section to get through. |
| Sarah | But when she arrives back at the hotel, she sees Peter getting arrested and she thinks, “Great. The police have it figured out. This guy was involved in his father’s death.” The penny still has not dropped for her yet that Carrie was involved as well. Um, that takes a little bit longer. |
| Sarah | Judah has not listened to her, and he arrives at the hotel. And she tells him everything. She realizes that she cannot keep this a secret anymore. And it’s in her telling this that the the penny, I think, finally drops for her that, “Oh, you know what? Maybe Carrie was up to something.” |
| Sarah | And she and Judah realized that Carrie has run off with Lo’s bag, but Judah has put an air tag in the bag that Lo didn’t know about. And so they can figure out where where Carrie is. So, Brook, when you’ve come to this realization, would you contact the police or would you go and confront Carrie yourself? |
| Brook | I would 100% contact the police. We’ve established before that I’m a big ninny and i would just be so pleased that we had this way of tracking her, but I would go to the police. But Sarah, her reasoning is because she kind of wants to give her another chance to explain what she’s done. Like, Lo. |
| Sarah | Yeah, yeah. She must be a very patient mother. |
| Brook | That is a good point. |
| Brook | But we do have now not just… Lo, but Judah is also ah ah reporter. And so, I’m kind of hoping at this point that as a team, they’re going to be a little bit more wise. But really that’s not the case because they do go to Carrie’s house and Carrie says, “you’re right. I’m going to turn myself in and, but I don’t want to be turned in to the local police. I want you to call the Interpol guy that came to visit you a few days ago.” And would you just take this opportunity to call this Interpol guy and hand Carrie off to him? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I i mean, Lo didn’t have a great experience with the UK police. And so I think she’s a little bit more trusting of this detective who’s from Interpol. But I was a little disappointed, as you point out, she and Judah are both reporters. And in this conversation that she has with Carrie, she doesn’t think, “you know, I’m going to record this because there just might be some value in having some record of this conversation.” I was a little, you know, let down by her journalistic instincts there. |
| Brook | That is a great point, Sarah. I did not catch that. But it would have been a really great ah piece of evidence that could have you know that Ruth Ware could have used later in the story. |
| Brook | And I was disappointed kind of in the same – um feeling there that she didn’t invite Judah in to listen to the conversation. She wanted Judah to wait outside. And I was like, heck no, I would want, not only is he your partner, he’s also ah journalist. And I would really want that person to be by my side when I’m questioning this a woman who has committed a crime. |
| Sarah | Yeah, ah absolutely. ah But they don’t do any of that. And she phones Inspector Capaldi, who arrives and takes her away, only for them to realize that, in fact, he is not a policeman. |
| Brook | No, he does not work for Interpol. Interpol does not arrest people for crimes. They’ve completely been duped by Carrie once again. |
| Sarah | Yeah. And so finally, Lo explains everything to her lawyer. And he goes off to tell the police. And she is home alone because her husband has taken her mother to the grocery store. And there’s an intruder in the house and it turns out that it is Peter. And he has come to pick up a burner phone that Carrie left in Lo’s jacket when they parted. And so, Lo realizes there must be some evidence on this phone that Peter absolutely does not want anybody else to have. |
| Brook | And it’s the piece of evidence that will exonerate Lo. Before the Interaction is over. Peter has taken his own life and Judah and and ah Lo’s mom return home. And that’s kind of the um tie up of the case because the police are able to put all the pieces together now to know that it was Carrie and Peter working in league and Lo was just an innocent bystander. |
| Sarah | That’s right. So in a little denouement, Lo receives a ah message via Instagram that is a photo of Carrie and the man who was pretending to be Inspector Capaldi on a beach, clearly in love. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So my question for you here, Sarah, is would you worry about Carrie coming back into your life again? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I you know, probably. She’s acknowledged that she’s still out there. and it’s not a, Lo doesn’t view this as ah as a threatening message at all. But I think I would be a little concerned that this woman who now twice has ah led to some pretty harrowing events for Lo is still around and knows how to reach her. |
| Sarah | Um, and you know, they, they seem to have this strange affection for each other, this strange fondness. Um, you know, maybe it’s, uh, is it Stockholm syndrome where you, um, you know, start, yeah, yeah. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. Trauma bonding. |
| Sarah | Um, so I don’t know. Do you, do you think that there’s going to be uh, a yeah ah third book in this series? |
| Brook | I think that that window is open, but you know usually we don’t talk a lot about the book um as a whole when we do our What Would You Do’s, but I think in this situation, since we talked about book one as a, what would you do? |
| Brook | And we have this. And then, um, I was, like I said, I was able to hear Ruth Ware speak on this book a little bit. I’d like to do a little bit more of a discussion on that, Sarah. Um, Ruth Ware was very honest that she never intended on writing a sequel to this book. |
| Brook | Uh, in fact, uh, The Woman in Cabin 10 was a huge success and she had a lot of fan mail requesting like, hey, what happens to Lo next? And she was just not interested. And this was you know going on 10 years. But eventually she gave in and I’m not sure if that was her decision or a publisher’s decision to go ahead and follow up on the story of Lo. |
| Brook | How do you feel, Sarah? Do you feel like that that kind of shows that that wasn’t maybe in her heart to to do this book? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I, you know, hearing you say that and thinking about the book, I think and it was a good book. I, I enjoyed it. And if there was a third in this in the series, if we if we revisit Lo and Judah in another 10 years, I probably will read that as well. |
| Sarah | But it is rare in domestic thrillers to have sequels, right? We’ve talked about them before where we, you know, get this visibility into these characters’ lives and then we don’t see them again. It’s not like um cozy mysteries or detective fiction where you kind of develop this um relationship almost with the characters, right? Right. And and ah you want to see how they’re how they’re continuing to live. That’s very unusual for domestic thriller because domestic thrillers often don’t tie up super neatly for everybody. |
| Sarah | And, and I think it’s just a very different kind of writing when you’re writing a domestic thriller versus when you’re writing a series. And if you haven’t set out for the book to be part of a series, it sometimes comes through. And I think it did come through in this book. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, about halfway through, I got to thinking like, “what if this were just a standalone? This wasn’t Lo Blacklock. This is just a woman who has had a terrible experience and now is finding a new connection with these people that she’s, you know, that we didn’t know quite so much about the first story.” I think it would have worked a little bit better. And maybe people who are just going right to the Woman in Suite 11 won’t have as much of a problem with it because to me, it’s almost too much suspension of disbelief to have these, like who has this many terrible things happen in their life. |
| Brook | Anyway, that was just a thought I had. is like I wonder if she had just made it another standalone if I would have some of the same problems with the storyline. |
| Sarah | I think that’s a really good question, Brook, because I think with ah a few adjustments, this easily could have been a completely standalone book with all new characters, and the story would have worked really well. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. Yeah, because at the end of the day, this is still Ruth Ware’s beautiful writing. um you know i always like the way she tells a story and the way that she carries us through. Her ah insight into somebody’s mind is always really fun. And ah I’m like you, if there’s a book three, I’ll be reading it |
| Sarah | Brook, this has been so fun to dissect The Woman Suite 11. I always enjoy doing the, What Would You Do episodes with you? |
| Brook | I do too, Sarah. And we hope that you enjoyed today’s What Would You Do episode, listeners. But for today, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
