The Hunting Party
Lucy Foley, 2019
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A New Year's reunion of old friends at a snowbound Highland estate, where one of them will not survive the year — and everyone has a reason. A snowbound reunion acquires a slow-burning dread, its nostalgic banter curdling under satirical scrutiny as death hangs over the gathering.
Feels like dread and nostalgia. About friendship and death.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy closed-circle crime built around old friendships, snowbound tension and a wry, satirical eye on privileged reunions. The self-regarding friend group and chilly social satire can make the company hard to like, especially if you want a warmer mystery.
Why read it
It gives you the closed-circle pleasure of watching old affection and fresh resentment share one snowbound house, with Foley tightening the social pressure until the dread feels personal.
A page from the book
How little pressure it takes to find out what someone really is.
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. Lucy Foley.Foley wrote historical fiction and commercial novels before switching to crime; she has cited Agatha Christie as the model for her closed-circle plots.
Books that feel like this
More by Lucy Foley
The Guest List
Lucy Foley, 2020
A wedding on a remote Irish island, a body, and a guest list full of people with reasons to lie.
The Midnight Feast
Lucy Foley, 2024
A wellness retreat opens on the Dorset coast: white linen, clean food, old grudges. The village remembers everything the guests are paying to forget.
The Paris Apartment
Lucy Foley, 2022
A broke young woman arrives in Paris to stay with her brother, but he has vanished and his neighbors are lying.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Hunting Party for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy closed-circle crime built around old friendships, snowbound tension and a wry, satirical eye on privileged reunions. The self-regarding friend group and chilly social satire can make the company hard to like, especially if you want a warmer mystery.
- What is The Hunting Party like?
- A snowbound reunion acquires a slow-burning dread, its nostalgic banter curdling under satirical scrutiny as death hangs over the gathering. Feels like dread and nostalgia. About friendship and death.
- What should I read after The Hunting Party?
- If you liked The Hunting Party, try The Wife Upstairs (Freida McFadden), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J. K. Rowling) and Truly Madly Guilty (Liane Moriarty).
A taste of the feed
Some houses are haunted by things that are too alive.
I can’t say to him what I’m really thinking, which is that this house gives me the creeps. Maybe Victoria loved it here, but I don’t. And for that matter, his wife gives me the creeps too. There’s something about her and that blank expression that terrifies me. It’s an awful thing to say about a woman who has been through something horrible, but I can’t help it.
The Wife Upstairs · Freida McFadden
What a friend paints on her ceiling when she misses you.
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same; Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends...friends...friends...friends... Harry felt a great rush of affection for Luna.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows · J. K. Rowling
What if the worst day begins exactly like any other?
There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don’t become someone else. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same.
Truly Madly Guilty · Liane Moriarty
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