About the Book

Everyone’s invited. Everyone’s a suspect.

Nine friends ring in the New Year in the remote Scottish Highlands.

As the curtain falls on another year, the celebrations begin.

The next 48 hours see the friends catching up, reminiscing over past stories, scratching old wounds. . . And guarding friendship-destroying secrets.

The clock has barely struck 12 when a broken body is found in the snow.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

When a thick blizzard descends, the group are trapped.

No-one can get in. And no-one can get out.

Not even the killer.

 

My Thoughts

The Hunting Party has such a great premise – the idea of a group of old friends from university days going on holiday together along with their partners, and ending up stuck in a remote Scottish location due to the heavy snowfall is irresistible to me!

The Hunting Party is a little different from other novels that I’ve read with a similar premise in that we know from the start that one of the party has been murdered but we don’t know who. The novel goes back and forth in time across the whole weekend and gradually you start to have your suspicions about who might have been killed and who might be the killer. Part of me would have preferred to know who was killed so I could enjoy trying to work out who was most likely to want that person dead, but another part of me enjoyed being kept guessing about all of it. It meant I was suspicious of everyone, and also judging each of their actions more harshly than I otherwise might because I knew one of them would turn out to be a killer!

There are multiple characters in this book but it’s easy to keep track of them as they all have their own characteristics. None of them are particularly likeable but I can’t help but enjoy novels where no one is my type of person. It really works in this book as you see the events unfold and slowly work out who is dead and who might have killed them.

It always fascinates me to read novels where people are still friends with people they knew from school or university. We change so much in the years from uni to our late 20s and lives become so different so when a group is clinging on to what they once had it’s only going to be a recipe for trouble in a novel. I think friendships only truly survive if you continue to have solid things in common rather than trying to force it. The group in this book for the most part are definitely trying to recreate their youth and to recapture a bond that they once had.

This is a great novel to read at this time of year as the sense of cold and snow and isolation is perfect for winter. This is a new take on the locked room mystery and I recommend it for curling up on the sofa with a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket as the cold winter weather swirls around outside!

I received a copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

The Hunting Party is out now in ebook and is due for release in hardback on 24th January. Buy Link.