Book Review: The Hunting Party
Some time ago I bought a blind date with a book from Barnes and Noble. I don't normally do that because there's too much of a gambling element, and I'm pretty picky with my reading. But this one time I did, and the book, once unwrapped, sat on my shelf for a long time (mood reader here). Anyway, I picked it up on Sunday after staring at my shelves for far too long.
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley is a murder mystery where you don't learn the identity of the victim until the big climax where the murderer is also revealed. It's about a group people in their early thirties, a college friend group who continues to keep in touch through a yearly New Year's Eve trip, who go to a remote lodge in the Scottish highland. And then, in the isolation and cold, dark secrets come to light and the friendships fall apart before someone is murdered. It is told from the perspective of three of the guests as well as the property manager and gamekeeper, in two time frames; everything leading up to the murder, and from the discovery of the body to the final showdown.
Because the victim is not revealed until the very end, there's a lot of tension, of questioning, of slow buildup, that kept me turning the pages. The characters are interesting (even if most of the friend group are terrible people) and flawed. The two employees who make up the bulk of the narration for the second half of the timeline are sympathetic while also being flawed with their own terrible backstories. There's also a twist in the final act right before the final reveal that really makes you question things and resolves some questions the narration brought up that end up having nothing to do with the murder.
One thing I had the tiniest bit of trouble with was this was written by an English lady, published in the UK, and it was not Americanized at all. Which is totally fine, I'm not saying it should have been, but there were a lot of words and phrases that were British slang I did not know. I could understand some things from context, but there was also stuff related to the British education system that I could not wrap my head around. Some of the grammatical construction was different than I'm used to, as well.
All said, I give this 4 out of 5 stars.