Lucy Foley has given us a spectacular character-driven mystery, beginning with the discovery of a body lying in the snow. Whose body? We don't know, and won't know until the end of the novel.
We are then thrust into bustling action, several days before this unnerving discovery. A group of friends from Oxford are getting together for their yearly New Year's Celebration ritual. This year, they are heading off for a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, which in the case of inclement weather will be cut off from roads, transportation, shops, other people...pretty much any other form of civilization known to man. Even internet connection is spotty in this part of the world. The only outsiders are the lodge manager, the caretaker, and two other guests.
This close-knit group of friends has known each other forever, but from the beginning of the trip, something has seemed...off. The lodge manager notices it, and in the chapters, each narrated by different characters, we piece together long-simmering tensions in the group, uncover secrets and passions, and discover what led to murder.
Everything isn't what it seems in this fast-paced chiller.
The characters are complex, the narrative strands weave deftly together, and ending was a surprise, though the strands were there all along. Foley's writing is neat, descriptive enough, and gives a sense of the vast wilderness, but always keeps our focus on the action and plot. Never is there a descent into stereotypes or idiocy--everyone is real.
As the focus of the plot switches from the group of friends, to the search for a missing person, Foley never loses control of the characters. Intense and riveting. Great read.
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About the author
Rating: 3 Stars
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley is definitely a page turner, with all the elements that make it a great thriller. At least, till you finish. Then you realize that you have been left with some unanswered questions, that keep niggling at you. A group of friends has been spending New Year's Eve together for the last ten years, ever since they were students at Oxford. This year they find themselves isolated and cut off from the rest of the world on an estate spread over thousands of acres in the Scottish Highlands. The cracks in their long lasting friendship begin to appear on the train journey to the remote location. They reach the estate on 30th December, and by New Year's Day, one of them has disappeared. Things seem to be normal as they all try to capture the old feelings of being carefree and having a good time, but over time each one of them has become resentful and holds grudges from things said and done over the last decade. As events start to unravel, it seems like any one of them could be a murderer....or the victim. Going back and forth in time, the story is told from 5 different perspectives, and it is not clear who the victim is until very near the climax. The suspense is gripping and the setting is bleak and brutal. The characters are nothing new, just the typical type of people in almost every book about old friends. There's the Queen Bee around whom the whole group revolves, the handsome but shallow Hunk married to the Queen Bee, the simple and quiet Best Friend, the Angry dude with a secret crush on the Queen Bee, the Gay couple, the Loved Up couple with a kid, and the Wannabe who wants to be best friends with the Queen Bee. Even with such cliched characters, the story is interesting and keeps you glued to find out who has been killed, and who has the stomach to commit murder. After investing so much time, you suddenly find that the ending leaves a lot to be desired. The climax is not spectacular, but it is satisfactory. The epilogue, though leaves a lot of relevant questions unanswered while giving details on things that were rather irrelevant to the main story.
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