The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

Overview

AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED THRILLERS OF THE WINTER BY:

Goodreads • BookBub • PopSugar • BookRiot • Crimereads • Pure Wow • Crime by the Book

ALL OF THEM ARE FRIENDS. ONE OF THEM IS A KILLER.

“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

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 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, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

DON’T BE LEFT OUT. JOIN THE PARTY NOW.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062868909
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/12/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	14,847
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

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 The Book of Lost and Found and The Invitation. She lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

11/26/2018
Historical novelist Foley (The Invitation) makes an auspicious thriller debut. Nine close friends, four of them couples, gather for their extravagant annual New Year’s getaway—this time at Loch Corrin, a remote estate in the Scottish Highlands—a decade after most of them graduated from Oxford. Tensions, sexual and otherwise, first flare during the lengthy, alcohol-lubricated train trip from London on December 30, fanned by charismatic, capricious Miranda—the golden girl most men want to be with and more than a few women long to become. At the Loch Corrin station, they’re met by Doug, the estate’s odd, though hunky, gamekeeper; at Loch Corrin, they encounter unexpected additional guests: a pair of strange Icelandic backpackers. Things start to go seriously wrong with the arrival of a blizzard that will soon cut off the 50,000-acre spread from the outside world. And then one of them disappears. Foley spins her story skillfully through multiple narrators, and if she’s less sure-handed with character, this still makes for a cracklingly suspenseful story for a long winter’s night. Agent: Alexandria Machinist, ICM Partners. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

The Secret History meets And Then There Were None, this is a fantastic crime debut.

Cass Green

Twisty, layered and compulsive. I raced through the pages in a hunt to discover the truth.

Lucy Clarke

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

Fans of Ruth Ware will likely rip through The Hunting Party at warp speed.

Popsugar

An addictive murder mystery full of suspense, secrets and surprises. I loved it!

Alice Feeney

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

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

A claustrophobic, compulsive read.

Tatler (UK)

I loved THE HUNTING PARTY – a gripping, eerie thriller set in a beautifully imagined remote wilderness with pitch-perfect characters.

Laura Marshall

2018-10-28

Ever since college, these nine friends have remained close. This year, only eight of them will go home from their New Years' party.

While Miranda and Katie are childhood friends and bonded with Julien, Mark, Samira, Giles, Nick, and Bo while they were at Oxford or soon after, Emma didn't become part of the group until she married Mark just a few years ago. For that reason, she has gone all out to plan this year's New Year's gathering at a remote Scottish hunting lodge. "Very exclusive," she reports. "They only let four parties stay there each year." She's had the place stocked with truffles, foie gras, and other delicacies, and Miranda and Julien have brought a case of Dom Pérignon. As we turn the first page of Foley's (The Invitation, 2016, etc.) debut thriller after several historical novels, it is Jan. 2, 2019. Heather, the manager of Loch Corrin, receives a breathless visit from Doug, the rough-hewn and scary/sexy gamekeeper. He has found the body of the missing guest. We won't know which guest that is, of course, for quite some time. The tense tale of this ill-fated reunion is told in flashbacks from several different characters' perspectives, each with a different angle and a different dark secret in his or her past, as is classic in this form of the whodunit. It seems likely that the killer comes from the ranks of the guests—there's a good bit of interpersonal tension, much of it generated by the extreme gorgeousness of Miranda, the queen bee of the crowd. Her relationship with her husband, Julien, is surely not the bed of roses the others believe, and her so-called best friend, Katie, seems to hate her guts. On the other hand, there's mention of a serial killer on the loose in the Highlands, so who's that sneaking around in the woods?

Plot, reasonably clever. Setting, nicely done. Characters, two-dimensional stereotypes, but you can't have everything.

Kirkus Reviews

The suspense will keep you reading long after lights out.

Woman & Home (UK)

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)

Thrilling and atmospheric. I loved this thoroughly modern and glamorous update of the country house murder mystery.

Tasmina Perry

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

 ”[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

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

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

A ripping, riveting murder mystery—wily as Agatha Christie, charged with real menace, real depth. Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware.

A.J. Finn

Lucy Foley proves that the traditional country-house murder formula…can still work brilliantly.… Superb."

The Times (London)

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

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

A tense, perfectly paced murder mystery.

People

Psychological suspense that rivets. Imaginatively conceived and deftly executed.

Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

A brilliant, addictive, claustrophobic read.

Karen Hamilton

A great update on the classic country house murder… brilliantly builds the tension.

Good Housekeeping

Lucy Foley proves that the traditional country-house murder formula…can still work brilliantly.… Superb.

Times (London)

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.

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