The Hunting Party: A Novel

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.

No spoilers. For this and her other thrillers, Foley uses a device of telling the story through the perspectives of several of the main characters, and jumps back and forth from events leading up to the crime and then after. You don’t even know exactly what happened apart from the fact someone is dead until very late in the telling; this might be impossible to pull off for most writers but as Foley fills in the backstories and secrets and connections between the characters she expertly keeps the reader hanging and wondering how exactly this is all going to collide on the worst New Year’s Eve ever for this group of college friends united at a desolate lodge with the most complicated - but likable! - innkeepers in the history of the hospitality industry. Foley weaves in some spot-on observations on lifelong friendships and frenemies and the things we sometimes overlook in those we consider closest to us along the way. I loved this book. Very satisfying denouement. I’ll be reading her other stuff and this book is now one of my go-to gifts for my favorite people and lifelong friends.

The book is technically well written in that the prose is engaging and moves the story along. It's a fine read (or listen) and the imagery is vivid. A few of the characters are compelling and I'd have loved if the author had explored them more carefully. That might have been possible if 5 characters who had absolutely no story movement hadn't taken up space on the page. There are literally 5 characters whose presence does nothing to forward the plot. While past incidents involving a couple of these characters shed some light on more relevant characters, these memories were told not shown, so there was literally no reason to include the characters in the hunting party. I'm not sure how a story editor missed this. This is the first book I've read by Lucy Foley, and I'll probably try another title by her because the writing is good but I'd have rather known significantly more about Heather and Doug than spend time with the 5 characters who had no influence on the events of the book.

It is not often I get the pleasure of a book that hides the identity of the victim and does it in such a delightfully sneaky way. The Hunting Party is split between two times and two sets of players – giving a slow burn quality to the novel. There is an ever-present sense of permission to the reader – permission to take their time to tease out the small intricacies of the relationships presented and to find not only the killer but also their motivations. A vague idea of a very close group of friends slowly develops like a picture into a web of secrets, hidden feelings, and betrayals. Foley has a knack for revealing just enough information in each scene between friends to give a natural feel to the discovery of each of their dirty secrets. I felt like an uninvited guest spying on the small group as their festivities spiraled out of control. The added weaving between narration from different characters gave me an added layer to many scenes – often one scene was perceived very differently by everyone in the room. The other half of the book attaches the reader to the lodge manager and the groundskeeper. It quickly became evident that both of them had a deeply personal reason to work in solitude in the isolation of the Scottish Highlands. What those reasons are is another slow reveal, these were a bit less tantalizing than the intricacies of the relationships between old college friends but nevertheless, the narrative was quite interesting. Now… here comes a bit where the marketing of the book ruins something in it (for me). When this book was publicized the fact that one of the people from the group arriving at the lodge was the killer was widely known. However, there is a significant part of the book that deals with the fact that there is a serial killer on the loose and the fact that the groundskeeper is kinda dodgy… Both of those would have been great to add to the complexity of the book yet they slowly fade in the background. When Heather (the lodge manager) is out in the woods alone with the groundskeeper I could not empathize with her sense of fear of her search companion. Don’t get me wrong – a closed group trope is the reason I bought and devoured this book! Unfortunately, it made a portion of the plot knock the tension out of me and make me have to build back up to a sense of curiosity in the murder. I also have to give Foley major props on the setting. She uses weather and atmosphere in a truly fantastic way to create the feeling of an oppressive prison in the wide expanses of the endless Scottish Highlands.

The Hunting Party “Everyone’s invited....Everyone’s a suspect” This is my second book by Lucy Foley and wow, wow, wow! She has an amazing writing style and really gets me hooked first page in! I really enjoyed this book and once again, something that really intrigues me is when I can’t figure out who the killer is. This happened again in this book. I would never have guessed who the antagonist was in this book and it all made sense when it came together. This book follows a group of friends on a New Years Eve getaway in a remote area. These friends get together every year, and most of them have been friends since college days, minus a few they have met along the way. The two workers at the lodge are Heather and Doug, who both share dark secrets, and chose to work there to be away from people. The book starts off with one of the guests “missing” and then presumably murdered. The book goes back and forth from the present day, the day after the murder and then back to the days leading up the murder. Throughout the book, you learn all about the characters, their lives, their secrets, and their regrets. I particularly liked the character Doug. He was a good man that had a bad past, but proves his worthiness as the book goes deeper. I hated Miranda. She was a bully and a terrible friend and I for the life of me can’t figure out why any of them were friends with her or let her speak to them the way she did. There was legit nothing flattering about her character. All these friends, all these secrets, all this hatred, makes it very hard to pinpoint who the murderer is and who was murdered.....

A group of entitled 30-somethings get together to catch up, and apparently re-live their pasts. They are not a likable group. Miranda is a shallow "star," Katie is her plain friend always in her shadow, Emma is the organizer of the event, and Julien is Miranda's husband. The other characters, Samira, Giles, Nick, and Bo are mentioned only in passing. Why the Icelandic couple is even mentioned is odd since they play no role in the mystery. It is odd that this group of entitled, sophisticated Oxford grads would meet in an isolated hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands. None of them is into hunting or outdoor life. Why Emma thought it was a good idea to have a reunion weekend at this lodge is not explained, but it certainly didn't work out well. This lodge, deep in the woods far from the nearest town, is further isolated by a heavy snowfall. All the friends are unlikeable. But they do their best to recapture the fun and connection they had with each other twenty years ago. The relationships are frayed and unravel during the weekend. The only likable characters are Doug, and Heather. Doug is the competent ex-military virile man who is hiding from his past. He has contempt for the guests, but is responsible and does what he is supposed to. Heather, the manager, who suffered a loss is also running away. This is a typical Christie-like drama about a group of people isolated and unable to escape, when a murder is committed. Who the victim is is hinted at, but it's not hard to guess who it is. The murderer was a surprise to me. The writing is terrific. There are few redeeming features to this lodge or its creepy location. We know exactly what the main characters are like. I took one star off for the story being too drawn out. It would have benefitted from a tighter timeline. The writing is terrific

This novel was one of the most discussed and hyped crime fiction works of the last year and it is an excellent choice for the fans of authors such as Ruth Ware and Shari Lapena. Lucy Foley is a writer known mainly for her historical fiction books and The Hunting Party is her debut crime novel. It is a closed-room murder mystery taking place in the magnificent setting of the Scottish Highlands where the wild landscape is a character in itself. The main characters are a group of friends from the University of Oxford who are now in their mid-thirties and they decide to take a short break from their everyday reality in the exotic Highlands. They reside in an isolated lodge in the middle of the wilderness and soon tensions begin to rise and old antagonisms are brought into the surface after the first day. Moreover, extreme weather conditions will exclude any chance of communication with the outside world. A crime is going to be committed soon and the reader should focus on each character's thought process and backstory which will prove to be the key behind the murder. There is a pervasive Agatha Christie vibe and it seems that Foley is one of the most zestful fans of the English cozy mystery master. Foley uses a double timeline narrative as the reader is jumping back and forth between the present (2 January 2019) and the past (31/12/2018). In the present timeline, the gamekeeper of the lodge, Doug, a gloomy persona with a violent past, discovers the body of one of the guests. Foley doesn't reveal the identity of the victim, thus duplicating the mystery as the reader has to guess the identity of both the culprit and the victim. In the past timeline, we follow the group of friends' interactions from the moment they set foot in the lodge. We are watching the plot unfolding through the perspective of multiple characters: the gorgeous, attention-seeker Miranda, her meek though self-destructive best friend Kate, and the person who organized the trip to the Highlands, the newest member of the group, Emma. Furthermore, we watch the story's events unravel through the eyes of Doug and his overseer, Heather. All characters are multi-layered and have more than one secrets which are revealed to the reader in a steady, not too fast nor too slow, tempo. Foley's main theme is the corrosion of old friendships and the estrangement between her main characters. They once used to be one body and one soul, but now they all seem to have their own life and problems lacking the sense of closeness and camaraderie that existed during their Oxford years. The constant switching in perspectives allows the reader to become more familiar with some of the protagonists and after the first third of the novel, you will have shaped a general idea of who is who. Some may find it a bit confusing, but in reality, it's a smart trope that the author uses in order to delve deeper in terms of characterization as well as keeping the suspense alive throughout the book's 400 pages. None of the characters are particularly likable as Foley chooses to be strict with her creations. There is plenty of acidic criticism and cruel remarks made by all of them and emotions such as suppressed rage, jealousy, and resentment are ever-present in the characters' inner monologues and dialogue. Even though I enjoyed The Hunting Party, I cannot claim that it is a crime novel that the reader will remember in the years to come. It follows an over-used recipe that has not much to offer in terms of novelty or innovation. Nevertheless, it is a well-crafted work of crime fiction with interesting plot and characters that is worthy of its commercial success. Keep in mind that it is Lucy Foley's debut crime novel so that means that there will be more books in the near future. NOTE: L. Foley's new novel, The Guest List, will be released on May 5, 2020.

Absolutely amazing! One of her best books (although they are ALL awesome). Fast paced, compelling, and well written- I could not put it down and finished it one go. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

the guest list がとても面白かったので、こちらも読んでみた。 こちらの方が有名な作品という事で期待していたのだが、個人的にはthe guest listの方が良かった。 以下、ネタバレを含みます。 そもそもの設定からして、３０歳を過ぎた人達が、大学の時の友達どうしで集まって新年を過ごすというのがイマイチ腑に落ちなかった。 シャンパンの一気飲みも、３０歳過ぎてそのノリはないでーと思った。 Emmaもいい歳してなんでこの友達グループに固執してるんだろう、よその国の話だから日本とは価値観が違うんだろうか？と思いながら読んだが、Emmaに関してはMirandaに固執してるからだったんだね。 どの人物もリアルだったが、特にMirandaは、特異な人だしこういう人に実際に会った事はないが現実にいそうだなと思った。 あそこで死ぬのではなくて、何年も先が見たかった。 あそこで死なずにJulienと離婚してたら、キャリアもなく美貌もだんだん褪せてくる中でどう生きたんだろうか？ MarkはEmmaを放り出してMirandaに言い寄ったんだろうか？ Mirandaは光の部分も闇の部分も強烈だったが、ではKatieは風と共に去りぬのメラニー的な人かというと全然そうではなくて、あまり共感できる人ではないし裏ヒロインでもなかった。 裏ヒロインはHeather。この人が事件後、前を向いて歩くようになったので爽やかな気持ちになった。 あと、Emmaの裁判にはガッカリ。陪審員制だからこうなるんだろうか。 日本ならKatieへの殺人未遂も含めて無期懲役ぐらいになってたんじゃないかなぁ。

3.5 - 4 🌟 Although there are some very slow moments and the plot isn't really that amazing, it's a very entertaining story! I still don't know whether I like Miranda and Katie or not though... I would have liked more mystery, action, plot twists... and fewer irrelevant throwbacks 😔 But I enjoyed it somehow!

Um suspense rápido e fácil de ler. Daqueles que vicia e não solta até descobrir o final.

Spannend bis zur letzten Seite. Ich konnte das Buch nicht weglegen. Ich habe alle vier bis jetzt von Lucy Foley veröffentlichten Krimis gelesen - ich fand alle sehr gut. Mir gefällt, wie die Autorin die Geschichte und die Charaktere in kleinen Abschnitten ganz natürlich entwickelt.

Après avoir lu The Guest List, un peu déçu. Je m’attendais à une intrigue différente. Les personnages sont les mêmes (même psychologie, très bateau et stéréotypé), les thèmes globaux sont les mêmes, l’ambiance globale la même. Bref rien de fou