The Hunting Party

Lucy Foley's debut thriller is set to be one of the great thrilling reads of 2019

British crime novel writing is going through a vanguard or renaissance period currently, be it from the loner detective in Joseph Knox's Manchester set crime novels; to A.A. Dhand's Yorkshire set crime epics; and there is great representation by Fiona Barton from the female writers of these shores.

Set over a New Year's weekend of celebrations, Foley takes her protagonists away from their sheltered happy self-important London existence of wealth and privilege, dropping them into a remote part of the Scottish Highlands where they hope to engage in fun and frivolity over the four day weekend.

From the outset, the nine people she gives to us are of a millennial sort - highly educated having all met at university in Cambridge, in great employment and a better life than Riley.

The hope is that this is one last hurrah for the group before children and other responsibilities stop them in their tracks; and yet a swift blizzard puts pay to that as cabin fever sets in and the abundance of alcohol brings up resentment and old secrets amongst the group.

Atmospherically set amongst the vast landscape of a cold bleak Highland setting, Foley cleverly weaves an ever-changing narrative flash forwarding and backwards amongst many of the characters, this offers us different voices to listen to prompting quite a challenge for the debut author to maintain this flow of narrative.

From prissy Miranda, to quieter Katie, to lodge host Heather and gamekeeper Doug; Foley writes confidently in all these voices garnering quite a range of motives from all.

The anticipation for this novel has been met by the finished article here, and it is great to see a riveting example of crime fiction by a British female in the same vein as American Shari Lapena, Foley will be able to be heralded in the same company as Fiona Barton on the evidence of this first stab at crime novel writing.

The Hunting Party is out now Harper Collins in Hardback, Ebook