The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Posted on September 13, 2019 by J-LBRBSBLOGS

Paperback – 31 Oct 2019

Book blurb

Dripping with atmosphere, THE HUNTING PARTY is Lucy Foley’s hotly-anticipated crime debut. A razor-sharp and chilling Highland murder mystery. . .

Everyone’s invited. Everyone’s a suspect.

Nine friends ring in the New Year in the remote Scottish Highlands.

As the curtain falls on another year, the celebrations begin.

The next 48 hours see the friends catching up, reminiscing over past stories, scratching old wounds. . . And guarding friendship-destroying secrets.

The clock has barely struck 12 when a broken body is found in the snow.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

When a thick blizzard descends, the group are trapped.

No-one can get in. And no-one can get out.

Not even the killer.

My thoughts

A group of friends who had met whilst at Oxford and their ‘other halves’ are off to Scotland on their annual New Year’s Eve gathering. They are staying in a lodge next to a loch with some stunning countryside and mountain scenery to behold.

There are the nine friends, Heather the manager, Doug the gamekeeper, two visitors from Iceland and Iain who also works on the estate but he’s due to go home before New Year’s Eve as he does not live on the estate itself.

Heather and Doug have pasts, reasons for coming to live up in this rather lovely but somewhat bleak place. The Icelandic couple are a little strange. As for the group of nine their secrets abound and they are coming to realise that actually they don’t have too much in common, or do they?

Whilst there a woman is found murdered by the gamekeeper. Once the body is discovered, it was clearly murder, the police are called but they are not able to get onto the Estate due to the snowfall.

This is not the usual detective – Police or amateur sleuths – story although Heather and Doug appear to be concerned, it is more on the level of keeping themselves and the guests safe. The story is told by several people all clearly indicated in the headers along with a date indicating when that person is recalling what they are talking about.

It is an intriguing story and one that is quite fraught with danger, yes, but also with the tension from the stories and relationships we learn about as we read. This is a story as much about the dynamics of those relationships as it is about solving the mystery of what happened. There is a killer is it a stranger or one of the characters?

The story draws you in, keeps you wondering and builds to a tense climax.

I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it especially to those who like a different slant to a murder mystery and enjoy a good, well written story.

Thanks

My thanks to HarperCollins via NetGalley for an eCopy of The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.

20BooksofSummer

This is my twentieth book review in the 20BooksofSummer Challenge hosted by Cathy at 746Books – all the books were read, if not reviewed, in time.

Information

Publisher: HarperCollins (Paperback: 31/10/2019; Hardback: Out now)

Buy: HarperCollins AmazonSmileUK

Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities and worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry, before leaving to write full-time. The Hunting Party is her debut crime novel, inspired by a particularly remote spot in Scotland that fired her imagination. Lucy is also the author of three historical novels, which have been translated into sixteen languages. Her journalism has appeared in ES Magazine, Sunday Times Style, Grazia and more.