The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley
Published by Harper Collins UK, 24th January 2019
Genres: Thriller, mystery, crime, suspense
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased (second-hand)
Trigger warnings: violence, bullying, stalking
Synopsis
All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.
A group of old university friends gather at a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands to celebrate New Year. Three days into their stay, one of them is dead. The lodge has been cut off from the outside world by a snowstorm, meaning that the police cannot access the area to conduct an investigation. This also means that the killer was one of them.
My thoughts
I have been seeing this book all over Bookstagram and everyone has been loving it. And I can see why! I absolutely loved it too and I could not put it down.
As soon as I picked up this book I was hooked. The suspense created by Lucy Foley is just great. Not only does the reader not know who the killer is, until the very end, but we also don’t know who the victim is. Around halfway through the book, we are given a clue as to the gender of the victim, which allows us to narrow it down, but we still don’t find out until right at the end. I thought it was so cleverly written.
Each chapter is told from a different person’s perspective, giving the reader an insight into everyone’s thoughts and feelings throughout the reunion. This also offers more opportunities to try and work out who the killer and victim are. But there are quite a few potential candidates…
These might be old university friends, once a very close-knit group. But in the ten years since they left Oxford, a lot has changed and there are some very clear tensions, both between friends but also within the various relationships.
This was one of my favourite books of the year and I am looking forward to reading more from Lucy Foley.
My rating: 5/5