Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party is one a friend recommended that was on the towering TBR pile for ages. The one thing Covid has done is allow Auntie M to time to read more than usual, and from the opening two pages, she knew this one would be a read she’d recommend, too.

A group of old friends gather every New Year’s for a reunion, taking turns on choosing and planning where they will gather. This time the choice has fallen to Emma, partner of one of the original group. She finds Loch Corrin in the Scottish Highland wildness, an exclusive retreat that only takes four groups a year.

There are several couples who were all at Oxford together, and include Kate, part of the group without a current partner; also the gamekeeper, Doug, and the woman who runs the retreat, Heather.

The one thing everyone has in common are the secrets they hold.

The book opens knowing one of these people is dead. Subsequent scenes from several points of view unfold the previous days leading up to the murder on early New Year’s Day. A snowstorm muddies the waters, as well as any help from outside, but doesn’t tamp down the high emotions running wild.

Foley carefully exposes each of the character’s using others’ points of view. The secrets being held are slowly revealed, as is the identity of the victim, an amazing feat in itself, especially as the reader knows someone has been killed but is not certain whom.

Yet as more and more of the days are described, the victim is ultimately the one person all of the suspects have a reason to loathe. With everyone in attendance a suspect, the tension keep rising and the pace gets tighter.

A fascinating study of characters that is an absorbing read, one Alex Michaelides, author of The Silent Patient, calls “Reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best–with an extra dose of acid.”