There are good trashy reads and bad trashy reads; this one is a classic example of just how good a trashy read can be. Nine friends gather in a remote Scottish hunting lodge for their annual New Years’ Eve get-together. The majority of the group are friends from university, trying a little too hard to hold onto the strong ties from their youth and prove they’re still important to one another. Most of them are desperately insecure and possess personalities that are, to varying degrees, appalling. Miranda, the beautiful, troubled party queen is the most memorably appalling of them all.
Watching these entitled people interact with the two employees of the lodge, a crusty game keeper and a sensible manager, is mesmerising. Of course each of the employees have their own painful pasts, and the game keeper has a record of violence. Over the course of three days the lodge is snowed in. No one can get in and no one can get out, and one of the guests is murdered. Delicious.
The difference between good trashy reads and bad trashy reads is always in the quality of the writing. Lucy Foley conveys the luxury and remoteness of the hunting lodge with such realism it’s like looking at a travel porn magazine. And through some cleverly evasive writing, we don’t find out which of the guests is murdered until quite late in the book. The guests are sketched in broad enough brush strokes that we recognise them as types rather than people. Here’s Miranda’s reaction when her husband Julien insists on pouring a glass of expensive champagne for Heather, the manager of the lodge;
”She’s taken one tiny sip, to be polite, and put it back down on the tray. I imagine she thinks it’s unprofessional to have more than that, and she’s right. So, thanks to Julien’s ‘generosity’ we’re going to be left with a wasted glass, tainted by this stranger’s spit.”
As readers we feel no real sadness when one of the guests is murdered. The two lodge employees are, however, more three dimensional characters and the game keeper’s backstory truly engages our sympathy.
There is just enough reality in The Hunting Party to make it plausible and just enough escapism to make it enjoyable. You’ll never guess whodunnit. But go ahead, try.
