The Hunting Party

Crime 

Psychological Thriller

By Lucy Foley

Paperback 400 pages
Publisher HarperCollins (19th Sept 2019)

ASIN B07FK6L3T1

ISBN-13 978-0008297152

‘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.’ C.L. Taylor

📕My Review

Nine friends, who met at Oxford University, reunite at a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands to see in the New Year. They plan to spend four days partying and reminiscing. As the weather worsens, a heavy snowfall leaves them cut off from the outside world. They quickly learn the bond between them is far more fragile than any of them imagined. As tensions mount, old jealousies and long-hidden secrets begin to surface. Before the end of the holiday one of them will be dead.

This is a highly enjoyable character-driven novel. It isn't a whodunnit in the traditional 'Agatha Christie' sense. Yes, it keeps you guessing and the twists and turns are plentiful, but the reader doesn't discover who the victim is until near the end of the book. I thought it was a welcome and unusual departure from the norm.

The reader is taken on a journey of evolution - from the friends' university days to the people they've become in adulthood. Admittedly some are given more airtime than others, but it was an aspect I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the book's setting and it was this that initially attracted me - the remoteness, the bleakness, the worsening weather, the claustrophobia. It had all the elements I adore. 

My thanks to Lucy Foley, HarperCollins and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book.

Barnsey's Books Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📗The Blurb

EVERYONE’S INVITED. 

EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT.

Bristling with tension, bitter rivalries, and toxic friendships, get ready for the most hotly-anticipated thriller of 2019.

In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year.

The beautiful one
The golden couple
The volatile one
The new parents
The quiet one
The city boy
The outsider

The victim.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

📘The Author

Lucy Foley writes bestselling escapist, epic fiction that has been compared to Victoria Hislop, Santa Montefiore, Kate Morton and Lucinda Riley and is perfect for summer reading or as a bookclub choice. Lucy’s books have been translated into 16 languages. 

She worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry - during which time she wrote her first novel. Lucy now writes full-time, and is busy travelling the world (for research, naturally!) and working on her next book.  

Her first thriller, THE HUNTING PARTY, publishes in January 2019 and is a Scottish-highlands-set murder mystery which has been compared to Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and Donna Tartt’s THE SECRET HISTORY.

Lucy Foley on Twitter