“All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.”
A few days at an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands sounds like a great way to welcome the New Year. At least that is what it seemed like to a group of old college friends who had developed a tradition of getting together during that time of the year. Now that their lives have gone in different directions it has become the one time that they can all be together as a group. But fairly soon upon arrival it becomes clear that long held resentments are creeping up to the surface and that their friendship may have reached an expiry date, or maybe they were never quite friends at all.
They arrive on December 30th. Two days later, one of them is dead, and one of them is a killer.
“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.”
As a fan of closed circle mysteries, the premise for The Hunting Party is one I am very much drawn to. And in anticipation of the author’s upcoming book, The Guest List, I had to give this one a go. Unfortunately it did not end up working for me at all. The story is told through multiple perspectives and jumps back and forth in time, from the moment of arrival and present day, gradually making its way to the reveal. The format itself is fine but I don’t know if it was the best choice here. There are many characters (arguably too many) but we get the point of view of five of them: two in present day, and three from two days prior to the murder. Considering it is a story about a group of friends, this felt off to me, and as a result there are many characters that feel one-dimensional and completely forgettable. I feel that having less characters and all of their points of view presented would have worked much better, adding to the suspense. Continue reading “The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley”
“A cloth covers the jar that Bridie took from the bookcase in the nursery, and Ruby is thankful for this. For the contents have the ability to rearrange even a dead man’s sense of reality. As with all terrible, wondrous sights, there is a jolt of shock, then a hypnotic fascination, then the uneasy queasiness, then the whole thing starts again; the desire to look and the desire never to have looked in the first place.”
“Events come to people, not people to events. Why do some people have exciting lives and other people dull ones? Because of their surroundings? Not at all. One man may travel to the ends of the earth and nothing will happen to him. There will be a massacre a week before he arrives, and an earthquake the day after he leaves, and the boat that he nearly took will be shipwrecked. And another man may live at Balham and travel to the City every day, and things will happen to him. He will be mixed up with blackmailing gangs and beautiful girls and motor bandits. There are people with a tendency to shipwrecks–even if they go on a boat on an ornamental lake, something will happen to it.”
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Alina” He said. “You and I are going to change the world.”
“Call it what it is: monster racing.
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