The Hunting Party

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley is a 2019 mystery novel about a murder in the Scottish Highlands. Foley uses aesthetics of the sublime, tropes of the mystery genre, and fast-paced narrative tension to tell the story of a shattered group of friends and two damaged estate workers. Foley is the author of seven novels, three of which—The Hunting Party, The Paris Apartment, and The Guest List (a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection)—are under development for film adaptation.

Plot Summary

On December 30, 2018, a group of friends meets up and travels to Loch Corrin, a wilderness resort in the Scottish Highlands for a New Year’s Eve trip. Most of them met while attending university and have been in contact in the decade since, usually getting together for New Year’s Eve. However, the older they get, the more the secrets from their pasts and their new realities separate them.

Miranda, beautiful and popular, is married to Julien. Julien’s best friend, Mark, is there with his girlfriend, Emma, who doesn’t know about Mark’s crush on Miranda. Samira and Giles are married with a new baby, Priya. Nick brings his boyfriend, Bo. Only Katie, Miranda’s oldest friend from childhood, is single. The group has a complicated network of mixed emotions for one another. Some like each other more than others, and all are a little stressed about their trip to the wilderness. Although Loch Corrin is an elite vacation, the estate is immense and extremely isolated, and the group is more accustomed to glamorous city life than to nature.

Heather, who is secretly an alcoholic, and Iain manage the Loch Corrin lodge. The gamekeeper, Doug, is a handsome man who has a dark past. The narrative crisscrosses between 2018 and January 2, 2019, when the body of a missing guest is found with signs of death by murder, not by accident. The unforgiving and dangerous winter weather in the Highlands makes it difficult for police to arrive, so Heather must deal with the problem on her own. After researching Doug’s past online, Heather worries that his PTSD and history of violence means that he could be the killer.

During the friends’ New Year’s Eve party, many secret resentments arose. Miranda had outed Nick’s sexuality to his parents years earlier, which still causes tension between them. Julien and Miranda have been dealing with their own secret conflicts: Miranda is having difficulty getting pregnant, and Julien involved her in illegal insider training. Mark is still in love with Miranda and tries to confront her about Julien’s secret. Years ago, Miranda had slept with Giles, Samira’s husband, and in the early hours of New Year’s Day, Miranda finds Katie and Julien having sex in the hot tub; the narrative reveals that Katie is pregnant with Julien’s child.

Miranda turns to Emma after discovering her husband’s affair. However, when she finds a box of her own belongings in Emma’s room, Miranda realizes that Emma is her stalker. For years throughout university and after, Miranda had noticed objects disappearing, then started receiving notes with the belongings. The stalker had always freaked her out, but Miranda had turned it into a fun story for parties. However, with the evidence pointing to Emma, Miranda’s story turns into a nightmare. Emma follows Miranda outside to the bridge by the waterfall, where Miranda calls her weird. Emma strangles Miranda then pushes her off the bridge.

Before suspecting Doug of the murder, Heather suspects Iain. She scopes him out in an abandoned building by the burned remains of the former lodge. She discovers that Iain has been using the estate to smuggle cocaine, but Iain denies murdering Miranda. He says that he saw the murder and describes a woman resembling Emma. The snow stops, making conditions passable for the police to come assist Heather. She and Doug rush to the lodge just in time to stop Emma from killing Katie, whom Emma blames for Miranda’s death because Katie’s affair with Julien had upset Miranda, instigating the series of events that led to her death. Heather pushes Katie and takes the bullet.

Heather survives and decides to move back to the city, where her family and friends have missed her. Katie plans to give birth and rebuild a new friendship group. Julien goes on a detox trip, and Mark finds a new girlfriend. Emma admits to killing Miranda, but the prejudice of privilege finds her guilty of manslaughter and the court sentences her to only four years in prison.