The Hunting Party
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A group of college friends (with a couple romantic partners thrown in with the lot) get together every year for a new year’s eve vacation/celebration. This close group is perhaps not as close as they once were, after all, a decade has gone by since college. As the story progresses we see the fractures in what holds the group together. Are nostalgia and a shared history enough to weather life as adults?
Structured like no other mystery I’ve ever read. Because of the shifts in perspective and time, we are pulled into a very small sliver of life with the group…culminating in the murder. The constant shift in perspective re-visits the couple days in a remote get away that lead up to the murder.
But we don’t find out who is the murderer …OR who is the victim…until almost the very end. We know we’ve been tantalized..teased…that someone has been murdered and one of the small party of friends the murderer…and there is a slow but steady build to the reveal. And that’s when the pace really picks up…because once we know who the murderer is there we need to see if justice will be done…or not. And finally, the entire perspective seems to shift into place, and we know who are the real heroes of the story.
This would have been a mess in the hands of a less talented writer. But each character has a distinct voice, and actions that are clearly motivated by personality, shared history, and life experience.
The title is a bit of a misnomer. Until the very end. Trust me.