The Hunting Party

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 30th, 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: 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.

 Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

 Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?

Publisher: William Marrow | Genre: Thriller/Suspense | Source: Purchased| Rating: 3.5

An isolated setting? Check!

A blizzard? Check!

A murder on the loose? Check!

 

Ringing in the New Year at a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands sounds the idyllic spot for an annual reunion although they weren’t prepared for a blizzard to trap them there. With secrets and old resentments bubbling up, what’s supposed to be a week of catching up with old friends soon turns into tension and anger. When a member of the group ends up dead, everyone becomes a suspect and no one is safe.

 

I’m a bit on the fence about this one. I liked it. It had all the markers for a great thriller/suspense. I didn’t love it though. I made the mistake of reading The Guest List first and I loved it but had I read this one first, I think I would have enjoyed it better.

There are a lot people popping up in this book. While we do get multiple POVs, I don’t feel as though we got to know who the characters truly were. Everyone had a convoluted agenda. Everyone was concealing something, which turned everyone into unreliable narrators. All of the characters, except for Doug, the groundskeeper, and Heather, the manager of the lodge, were horrible people.   

 

This is very much a classic whodunit with a slight twist. While we know one of the seven friends was murdered, it’s not revealed who was murdered for some time and it wasn’t easy to pinpoint because none of the characters are likable. Each of them has their own secrets and secret resentments. It also made sussing out the murderer a little more difficult. I did have a feeling about certain things going on, which turned out to be correct, but I don’t feel as though it pulled me out of the mystery. There were a few red herrings thrown in, possibly one too many, but it didn’t bog down the flow.

 

What really drew me into this one was the descriptive setting. The Scottish Highlands in the middle of a crippling snowstorm became its own character. I loved how the author drew me into to this rugged landscape.

 

If you’ve read The Guest List, this has the same formula: a group of friends are trapped in some foreign location, one of them dies and one is the murderer. With the Guest List, I feel as though I knew the characters better. They were more fleshed out and I understood their motives.  

 

Overall, if you’re looking for an atmospheric thriller that will pull you into the cold, wintery, snowed in, isolated setting this is the book for you. Lucy Foley is brilliant at making the reader feel as though they’re right in the book experiencing the elements along with the characters.