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The Hunting Party: A Novel Mass Market Paperback – Feb. 23 2021
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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“My favorite kind of whodunit, kept me guessing all the way through, and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best -- with an extra dose of acid.” -- Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient
From the author of the Reese Witherspoon book club pick The Guest List
Everyone's invited...everyone's a suspect...
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
The trip begins innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps, just as a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. . . and another of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage says. But how close is too close?
DON'T BE LEFT OUT. JOIN THE PARTY NOW.
- Length
400
Pages
- Language
EN
English
- PublisherWilliam Morrow Paperbacks
- Publication date
2021
February 23
- Dimensions
12.1 x 2.3 x 17.8
cm
- ISBN-100063063581
- ISBN-13978-0063063587
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Product description
Review
“A tense, perfectly paced murder mystery.” — People
“Lucy Foley proves that the traditional country-house murder formula…can still work brilliantly.… Superb." — The Times (London)
“My favorite kind of whodunit, kept me guessing all the way through, and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best -- with an extra dose of acid.” — Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient
“A ripping, riveting murder mystery—wily as Agatha Christie, charged with real menace, real depth. Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware.” — A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
“Fans of Ruth Ware will likely rip through The Hunting Party at warp speed.” — Popsugar
“Like a deliciously drawn out game of Clue, this novel brings together a group of Oxford friends at a remote Scottish highlands estate for the Christmas holidays....Foley paints such a vivid hunting-lodge-and-lochs setting that you’ll immediately be booking your own highland fling, clandestine killers or no.” — National Geographic
“Everyone is a suspect in Lucy Foley’s clever murder mystery that harkens back to Agatha Christie and the Orient Express. Friends, lovers, strangers and murder at a secluded hunting lodge make for an absolutely delicious read!” — Wendy Walker, author of the national bestseller All Is Not Forgotten
“An addictive murder mystery full of suspense, secrets and surprises. I loved it!” — Alice Feeney, New York Times bestselling author of Sometimes I Lie
“Psychological suspense that rivets. Imaginatively conceived and deftly executed.” — Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
“An auspicious thriller debut...a cracklingly suspenseful story for a long winter’s night.” — Publishers Weekly
“Foley excels at the small details that make up a person… builds the tension cleverly and creepily, underlining the point that old friends aren’t always the best.” — The Observer (London)
“A great update on the classic country house murder… brilliantly builds the tension.” — Good Housekeeping, UK
“A claustrophobic, compulsive read.” — Tatler (UK)
“The suspense will keep you reading long after lights out.” — Woman & Home (UK)
“Anyone who’s grown apart from old friends will recognize the yearning depicted here to make everything as it was....Readers are left wondering until the end which guest has died as well as who the killer is; they will be well rewarded by the story’s ending.” — Booklist
“Very gripping and so good on the awfulness of some long-history friendships!” — Sophie Hannah
“Hugely entertaining. Full of surprises. This is a clever, twisting page-turner of the highest order. I loved it.” — Simon Kernick
“A brilliant, addictive, claustrophobic read.” — Karen Hamilton, author of The Perfect Girlfriend
“I loved THE HUNTING PARTY – a gripping, eerie thriller set in a beautifully imagined remote wilderness with pitch-perfect characters.” — Laura Marshall
“The Secret History meets And Then There Were None, this is a fantastic crime debut.” — Cass Green
“A first rate murder mystery with a cast of well crafted characters, secret upon secret and a healthy dose of deceit. You won’t look at your old friends in the same way when you read this book. I hugely enjoyed it. Guaranteed to be a huge hit.” — C.L. Taylor
“Thrilling and atmospheric. I loved this thoroughly modern and glamorous update of the country house murder mystery.” — Tasmina Perry
“Twisty, layered and compulsive. I raced through the pages in a hunt to discover the truth.” — Lucy Clarke
”[A] brilliant, edgy book about friendship and obsession. Atmospheric, spooky, dripping with threat, it’s a book to dig your claws into and not let go.” — Julia Crouch
“Brilliant characterisation. And great fun!” — Harriet Tyce
“It was gripping and exciting and wonderfully written, of course, with such incredible characters and a wonderful twist that I really didn’t see coming. I bloody loved it.” — Louise O’Neill
“Reminded me of The Party mixed with In a Dark Dark Wood with a dash of And Then There Were None.” — Sarah Vaughan
“Grab a blanket and read the surprising things that happen when highly educated English people let their hair down.” — Mystery Scene
From the Back Cover
All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
They arrive on December 30, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.
The trip began innocently enough: admiration of the stunning, if foreboding, scenery; champagne in front of a crackling fire; and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.
Now one of them is dead . . . and another one of them did it.
Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?
About the Author
Lucy Foley studied English literature at Durham University and University College London and worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry. She is the author of five novels including The Paris Apartment and The Guest List. She lives in London.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks (Feb. 23 2021)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0063063581
- ISBN-13 : 978-0063063587
- Item weight : 230 g
- Dimensions : 12.07 x 2.29 x 17.78 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #54,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #853 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
- #1,620 in Murder Thrillers
- #2,667 in Suspense (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Hello and welcome to my author page! Whether you’ve read my books before, are thinking of trying one out or just landed here by chance (or fate…?) it’s great to see you!
I’m the No.1 Sunday Times and New York Tikes bestselling author of The Hunting Party, The Guest List and most recently The Paris Apartment, a murder mystery set in a beautiful but eerie apartment block in Paris. Jess arrives to stay with her brother Ben and finds him missing — from various clues in his apartment and from the suspicious behaviour of the other residents in the building she begins to suspect something deeply unpleasant has happened to him…
A little about me: I always knew I wanted to work with books somehow, so I studied English at university before working in a bookshop, a literary agency and then as a fiction editor at a big publishing house, during which time I realised that every book starts off as a messy first draft full of plot holes and mistakes. I thought I’d have a go at writing myself — the result of which was my first historical fiction novel, The Book of Lost and Found. I wrote two more historicals, The Invitation and Last Letter to Istanbul, before turning to the dark side and writing my first crime thriller, The Hunting Party: my first Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Month, set over New Year’s Eve at a remote, snowy spot in the Scottish Highlands.
Next came The Guest List, a murder mystery set at a wedding on an island off the coast of Ireland, which was a Reese’s Book Club pick, a Goodreads Choice Awards winner, a Waterstones Book of the Month, and has sold over three million copies. Then came The Paris Apartment, which is a number one New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller.
My books have been translated into over 40 languages and all three murder mysteries are currently being adapted for TV and film.
I’ve also written a short story for the brand new Marple collection, a brand new series of short stories featuring Agatha Christie’s legendary detective Jane Marple, alongside writers such as Val McDermid, Kate Mosse, Alyssa Cole, Ruth Ware and Leigh Bardugo, out September 2022 to coincide with Christie’s birthday!
I’m currently hard at work on a fourth thriller, so watch this space!
If you enjoy my books or want to say hi, I’d love to hear from you: I’m @lucyfoleytweets on Twitter and @lucyfoleyauthor on Instagram, or you can check out my Facebook author page www.facebook.com/lucyfoleyauthor. Hope to see you there! And if you click the yellow 'follow' button, Amazon will send you an email when I have a new release, or if there's a promotion you might be interested in. It's the best way to make sure you never miss a book!
#TheParisApartment #TheGuestList #TheHuntingParty
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The story begins on January 2 when the body of a guest who was missing for over 24 hours is found murdered. The identity of the newly discovered body is not revealed and the killer and their motive is left a puzzle for the reader. The story is told from various perspectives by some members of the hunting party, and also by the lodge manager and gamekeeper and move back and forth in time from the arrival of the guests until the mystery is finally solved. Each chapter is clearly headed with the date and its narrator. The chapters which are told from the guests’ viewpoints reveals them to be unlikeable, and the others seem boring. It becomes clear that if they were only meeting now, very few would become friends. They have little in common except for a sense of entitlement and elitism.
The guest couples are: Emma and Mark. Emma has arranged the vacation. She is a relative newcomer who wants desperately to fit in. Her partner, Mark, has a volatile temper.
Samira and Gilles arrive with their baby, which prevent them from participating fully in events.
Miranda and Julien are considered the ‘golden couple’. Rich, self-absorbed and extremely wealthy, good looking and fashionable. Julien is not happy with the rustic setting and its lack of modern technology. Miranda tends to be rude insulting, and flirtatious but gets away with it, as the others are used to her behaviour and try to accept it.
Nick and Bo are a gay couple. Bo is from New York City and a recovered drug addict.
Kate is the sole lone guest. She is a successful lawyer. She was once best friends with Miranda, but in the intervening time has had no time for her. She was best friends with Nick back in University.
Doug, the gamekeeper and Heather, the manager, have moved to this isolated area to be alone, due to separate unfortunate events in their lives.
The separate chapters reveal something of the narrator's personality, their past friendships at University, and their impressions of the other members of the group, past and present. Long held dislikes, resentments, jealousies and affairs come to light. There is heavy drinking and some drug taking. People are behaving badly and tensions, once hidden, are simmering to the surface, ready to explode.
It is no surprise that one of the guests is murdered, as we discovered at the beginning of the book. A raging snowstorm outside has cut off help from the police by road and even a rescue helicopter is delayed. People are afraid. Not knowing the identity of the murderer, anyone could be in mortal danger.
Recommended to readers who like a modern take on the old fashioned 'locked-room' mystery. Where an unsolved murder has been committed amongst a small group of people with no way out in the immediate future. *3.5* to 4 stars
But the elements that are meant to be suspenseful feel forced, and are ultimately pretty transparent.
There's a whole bunch of characters to keep track of who contribute nothing to the narrative. And a lot of writing wasted on things that don't advance the plot or even help the atmosphere.
The characters feel like stereotypes, and it's hard to find any reason to care about any of them.
But, it was entertaining so I don't regret the money.
This was a fairly fast paced and atmospheric whodunit with some annoyingly fun characters and twists.
Top reviews from other countries
This book wasn't particularly overly captivating or anything, and the writing at time redundant. We really get beaten over the head with the various characters' personality traits, but I really enjoyed the description of the cold barren landscape. 4/5
I’ll come right out and say I enjoyed this book, but I found it missed the mark with some elements. This is your typical murder mystery with a handful of potential suspects with mounting motives, that keeps the reader reeled in until the end, and is then left with trying to discern the entire read. Throughout the book there was a building suspense to who was killed, and what the potential motives were. It built steadily, which kept me fully engaged with the story.
This book was very atmospherical; a mixture of winter wonderland and forest woodlands, in the cold dark nights of winter time in Scotland. As well, there were chapters in this book that focused on hunting animals, which if you’re an animal lover, will make your stomach turn. This really helped set the plot in the thriller-tone the plot was establishing and building toward.
The characters were tolerable. They were a bunch of stuck up spoilt adults who'd known each other from their entitled pompous years at university. So it is fair to say the characters were not exactly likeable due to their selfish, self-centred personalities. And the characters I think that were intended to be likeable, just weren't. They were flooded out by the drama of the other characters, and weren't strong enough characters to make an impression.
The story’s timeline altered between "before" and "after" the murder mystery, and was narrated through at least 5 perspectives; Miranda, Emma, Katie, Heather and Doug. Once I was able to finally get my head around who was who (honestly, I have no idea how I found this such a challenge, since the characters were so different), I liked these alternating perspectives. The characters were all different in personality, and through their personal narrations, it immersed me into their complex situations and behaviour. At times I felt the story concerning Heather and Doug was a bit irrelevant, but it was still interesting enough for that to be a minor issue. There were other characters, but the reader only knows about them through the eyes of the main 5.
There were sub-plots to build the main overarching plot, some of which I felt were easily predictable. Partly because they were, and partly because the author wished the reader to know such bits.
The climax was going well but ultimately it was underwhelming. Firstly, I predicted who was the guilty party and why they were, as I found it easy to work out. This was alright though, because I genuinely enjoyed the whys and whats surrounding it. However, a bit further toward the end of the story, I wish the rest of the climax had been expanded or explored more, rather than solely this: “big unexpected hero moment with no explanation of what went down because the screen fades to black... Epilogue.”
I didn’t like that. I would have liked to have known how it played out; what did the killer say after this? What did the other characters do? What were their reactions? None of this was explored. Instead, the book ran into the epilogue, that wasn’t very satisfying and felt quite rushed. It tied up the story’s ends, but it didn’t fulfill everything I was interested in knowing. What happened to the character whose life was going to be over? This wasn’t wholly concluded, when it had been a big part of the mounting tension.
Overall, The Hunting Party is an interesting murder mystery story that may leave other readers slightly frustrated with its lack of completing the sub-plots that are created. My favourite thing about the book was its setting as it complimented the plot. I read the book within 3 days and I’ve decided to rate this 3.5 stars, due to the issues outlined above but also because the story is entertaining. It's the kind of book you can snuggle up with on a cold day or night, and you'll be itching to find out what's going on. I would recommend it :)