Like Lucy Foley’s bestselling first foray into the crime genre “The Hunting Party”, “The Guest List” (HarperCollins, £12.99) is a very enjoyable updating of the golden age “closed world” mystery – another group of posh people, several of whom have secrets to hide, in a remote location. This time, it’s Cormorant Island, “a lump of granite emerging majestically from the Atlantic, several miles off the Connemara coastline”. Mostly peat bog, and only accessible by boat, it’s the hideaway setting for the fancy wedding of online magazine publisher Jules and her TV-star fiance Will. The wedding planner, the bride, the bridesmaid, the best man and plus-one Hannah take turns to narrate as a toxic brew of entitlement, one-upmanship, tanked- up ex-public schoolboys and past tragedies comes to a dangerous boil while a storm blows in. The plot may be overly dependent on fairly thumping coincidences, but a terrific sense of place, deft characterisation and sheer page-turnery more than compensate.
The Guardian: The best recent crime and thrillers
A person looks at a book in a library on Jan. 31, 2020 in Nantes, western France.
