REVIEW!!! Marple: Twelve New Stories

Image Description: The cover of Marple is cream with the title, in a tartan pattern, spelt vertically down the centre of the page.

Miss Marple was first introduced to readers in a story Christie wrote for The Royal Magazine in 1927 and made her first appearance in a full-length novel in 1930’s The Murder at the Vicarage.

It has been 45 years since Agatha Christie’s last Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was published posthumously in 1976, and this collection of ingenious new stories by twelve Christie devotees will be a timely reminder why Jane Marple remains the most famous fictional female detective of all time.

Whilst I very much enjoy stories featuring Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, I have to admit that my personal favourites of her books are those in which English spinster Miss Jane Marple tales the starring role.

White-haired and usually to be found in the vicinity of a ball of wool and a pair of knitting needles, Miss Marple is, on the surface, the quintessential English grandmother. Yet as Mrs Dane Calthrop says in The Moving Finger, Miss Marple “knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I’ve ever known”.

As a Miss Marple fan, it’s been an absolute delight to read twelve new stories featuring Christie’s much-loved detective, all of which breathe new life into an old favourite. From Lucy Foley’s ‘Evil in Small Places’, which sees Miss Marple in classic English country village territory to solve the murder of a choir mistress, to Alyssa Cole’s ‘Miss Marple Takes Manhattan’, which involves a theatrical murder during her nephew Raymond West’s first US theatre production, the twelve contemporary writers who have contributed to Marple: Twelve New Stories have done a fantastic job of paying homage to their source material without falling into pastiche or attempting emulation.

Joining Foley and Cole in paying tribute to Miss Marple are Val McDermid, Natalie Haynes, Ruth Ware, Naomi Alderman, Jean Kwok, Dreda Say Mitchell, Elly Griffiths, Karen M McManus, Kate Moss and Leigh Bardugo. Each brings their own unique style to Miss Marple’s adventures, with Karen M McManus using her YA background to excellent effect when she introduces us to Raymond’s granddaughter, Nicola West, and Elly Griffiths offering a spirited riff on the problem of crime-writers block in her tale, ‘Murder at the Villa Rosa’.

Fans of Miss Marple’s previous adventures will also be delighted to find returning other returning characters. In addition to Miss Marple’s nephew and his wife Jean, Miss Bella from A Caribbean Mystery acts as co-detective in Dreda Say Mitchell’s ‘A Deadly Wedding Day’, whilst Dolly Bantry makes an appearance in both Ruth Ware’s ‘Miss Marple’s Christmas’ and Leigh Bardugo’s ‘The Disappearance’. Miss Marple’s live-in companion Cherry also features in several of the stories, as does retired Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Henry Clithering.

Several of the stories see Miss Marple confronting the changing post-war world, with Kate Mosse’s ‘The Mystery of the Acid Soil’ one of several stories that gently confront the challenges of aging and find our heroine and her friend reflecting on earlier times. Contemporary concerns are also addressed, with Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Open Mind’ featuring a #MeToo-style scenario in an Oxford college (and doing a wonderful job of sending up academic pomposity in the process) and Jean Kwok’s ‘The Jade Empress’ confronting racial prejudice on board a luxury cruise liner bound for Hong Kong. Natalie Haynes’s ‘The Unravelling’, meanwhile, is one of several stories to gently examine the after-effects of war upon the Home Front.

As with most short story collections, I felt some stories were more successful than others, both in terms of capturing Miss Marple’s unique character and in providing a satisfyingly realised mystery within a relatively short space. Val McDermid’s ‘The Second Murder at the Vicarage’ is, as the title might suggest, probably the most classically Marple of the stories featured but I admired the way that writers utilising very different settings and styles managed to convey Christie’s spark – and Miss Marple’s unique appeal – whilst retaining their own unique voices.

Fans of Miss Marple are sure to be delighted to have twelve new stories featuring the sharp-eyed spinster to enjoy whilst, for those new to the character, it is to be hoped that this might act as an introduction to Christie’s lesser-known – but no less ingenious – sleuth.

Marple: Twelve New Stories is published by HarperCollins and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher and NetGalley UK for providing me with an e-copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However, if you enjoy the blog, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Image Description: The cover of The Paris Apartment shows a partially open door against a black background. Yellow light from the door emits the outline of the Eiffel Tower onto the floor.

Welcome to No.12 rue des Amants

A beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine.

Where nothing goes unseen, and everyone has a story to unlock.

The watchful concierge
The scorned lover
The prying journalist
The naïve student
The unwanted guest

There was a murder here last night.
A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three.

Who holds the key?

Foley’s previous novels, The Hunting Party and The Guest List (both read, reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed by yours truly), were deliciously plotted thrillers that revelled in revealing dark secrets and painful lies within friendship groups stuck in isolated settings. Her latest, The Paris Apartment, is a slightly different kettle of fish, although no less enjoyable for that.

Set in an exclusive apartment building, The Paris Apartment removes the isolation of her previous books and instead plonks main protagonist Jess right into the heart of sophisticated and elegant Paris. Down-on-her-luck Jess has come to stay with her half-brother, Ben, who has – somehow – managed to secure himself a luxury apartment in the heart of the city. But when Jess arrives in Paris, Ben is nowhere to be found. And his fellow residents of 12 rue des Amants seem to know more than they are telling about his disappearance. Determined to find her brother, Jess begins digging beneath the refined facade of 12 rue des Amants – and soon reveals some sordid truths beneath the glamour of this elegant Parisian building and its occupants.

As with her previous novels, The Paris Apartment flits between narrators, providing a number of compelling perspectives on events. Whilst Jess is firmly situated at the heart of the novel, we also get insights from a number of other characters including aloof penthouse-owner Sophie, Ben’s university friend Nicholas, terrified artist Mimi, and the mysterious, watchful Concierge. As the truth behind Ben’s disappearance – and the secrets of 12 rue de Amants – come to light, moving between these perspectives ups the tension and pulls the reader into a tangled web of half-truths, secrets, and deceptions, making for a page-turning and compulsive read!

I can’t say that I found the characters quite as compelling – this was, for me, definitely a novel that relies on propulsive plot and plenty of shocking twists and turns – but, despite their being a fairly large cast, I was able to clearly distinguish between their voices and perspectives. Foley is also brilliant at portraying unlikeable, dysfunctional, and amoral characters. Even Jess and Ben are shown to be deeply flawed – and, in Jess’s case, deeply traumatised – human beings, capable of acting immorally if it suits their own situation and needs. This amorality, whilst it might not be to every reader’s taste, does give the occupants of 12 rue de Amants a depth that can sometimes be lacking in thrillers.

Saying too much about the plot would be to giveaway the pleasure of reading The Paris Apartment but, safe to say, it’s packed with twists, turns, and secrets. The facade of 12 rue de Amants hides some seedy and unpleasant secrets so readers should be aware of trigger warnings for strong language, sexual content, sexual abuse, trafficking, alcoholism, domestic violence, drug abuse, violence, and suicide. Foley really ramps up the atmospheric tension in this novel as she peels back the layers of faded glamour to reveal the corruption and exploitation that lie beneath the lives of her characters, and there is a real sense of both dread and menace throughout the novel.

The Paris Apartment is sure to delight Foley’s existing fans. Although it moves away from the isolated settings of her previous thrillers, it definitely hasn’t lost that readability and page-turning ‘I need to know what happens next, TELL ME NOW’ quality! If you’re not a fan of suspense thrillers, The Paris Apartment is unlikely to convert you to the genre but if, like me, you enjoy the occasional compulsive read that will have you gripped for the whole of the weekend, you should definitely get Lucy Foley’s latest on your radar!

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley is published by HarperCollins and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me onto this blog tour.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

Following on from the success of The Hunting Party – a book that I greatly enjoyed when I read it back in January 2019 – Lucy Foley has returned with The Guest List, another sharp and atmospheric take on an Agatha Christie style mystery.

Multiple suspects are gathered together in a remote location, all with secrets to hide and resentments bubbling away under the surface. The wine is flowing, the music is playing and then…the body is found.

The setting this time is Inis Amploir, an island off the Irish coast that is home only to The Folly, a recently refurbished luxury wedding venue into which wedding planner Aoife and her chef husband have poured their savings. Hosting the wedding of successful lifestyle magazine owner Julia Keegan and adventurous TV celebrity Will Slater is, therefore, a bit of a coup and Aoife is determined to make sure that the lavish event goes off without a hitch. Her task is complicated by the rest of the wedding party, including the bride’s sullen half-sister Olivia, Will’s hapless best man Johnno, and Hannah, the plus-one to MC Charlie. And then there’s the body that turns up shortly after the wedding cake has been cut.

Alternating between the perspectives of Julia, Aoife, Olivia, Johnno and Hannah, as well as between the events before and after the wedding ceremony, The Guest List has a compulsive pull. As with The Hunting Party, each of the characters brings a unique perspective to events – as well as their own bundle of secrets, resentments and carefully crafted lies. The cast are a slightly warmer bunch this time out – even bridezilla Julia is reasonably sympathetic – and I found myself really warming to both Hannah and Aoife, both of whom provide a more ‘normal’ perspective on the glamour, glitz and slight level of ludicrousness that comes with a ‘celebrity’ wedding.

The events of The Guest List are also slightly slower in place than in Foley’s debut. Not all of the characters have a shared history and the whole set-up definitely felt more in tune with the classic ‘country house’ mystery of the golden age, with a disparate group bought together by circumstance. This is by no means a bad thing however as Foley controls the pace with consummate skill, dropping in little flashes forwards to the aftermath of the wedding to entice the reader and keep you turning those pages! Given that the identity of the body doesn’t become apparent until a good way into the book, there are certainly plenty of mysteries to keep you guessing. Plus, who doesn’t love a good wedding and all the drama that goes along with it?!?!

Anyone who enjoyed The Hunting Party is going to love The Guest List. All of the ingredients that made Foley’s debut so successful are present and correct here – a group of mismatched individuals, a remote location, and a dash of glamour. But The Guest List also feel like an evolution of the formula. The characters are more rounded and less stereotypical, the threads of the plot woven are just that bit tighter, and the ending a tad more satisfying. The book very much feels like the work of  a writer who has considered her success and, rather than sitting back and resting on those well-deserved laurels, has sought to improve upon it. As such, The Guest List may well bring in new fans to Foley’s work – it certainly deserves to as it’s a corker of a book with a wicked twist in the tale. Perfect for curling up with one blustery weekend!

The Guest List by Lucy Foley is published by HarperCollins and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Waterstones, Book Depository, and Amazon.

My thanks go to the publisher and to Netgalley UK for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review, as well as to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto the blog tour. The tour continues until the end of the month so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content!

 

 

 

 

REVIEW!! The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

EVERYONE’S INVITED. EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT.

In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. 

The beautiful one
The golden couple
The volatile one
The new parents
The quiet one
The city boy
The outsider

The victim.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

I have this thing about making sure my first book of any year is a good one – some strange superstition that the first book will, somehow, be a portent for the reading year to come. If that is the case then 2019 is going to be a great year because The Hunting Party, which I started on the morning of 01 January and breathlessly finished two days later, was just fantastic!

Set at a luxury hunting lodge in the remote Scottish highlands, the book follows nine university friends, back together for their annual New Year celebrations. Beautiful, effervescent Miranda is the life and soul of any party – but at 33, desperate to start a family and with no meaningful career, is there a sadness lying behind her shimmer? Miranda’s handsome husband Julian meanwhile, is hiding more than just one secret, whilst his best friend Mark seems more volatile than usual. For new parents Samira and Giles, this trip will be their first with baby Priya – as they struggle to adapt to life with a baby, do they really have that much in common with their old friends? Old tensions simmer beneath the surface of golden couple Nick and Bo, whilst career girl Katie seems even more quiet than usual. And what of Emma, organiser of the trip but forever the outsider. Will she really ever fit in with the rest of the group? For Doug and Heather, employees at the lodge who are keeping their own secrets, these are just another group of monied guests seeking adventure. But as the snow falls around them, isolating the lodge from civilisation, tensions rise and old friendships fracture and, on New Years morning, a body is found lying in the snow.

I was utterly gripped by this book! From the start I found the characters utterly fascinating – there’s something so gloriously dysfunctional about them all. With a few exceptions, these are the sort of people I would utterly detest in real life – unknowing in their privilege, and unbearably nasty to anyone who doesn’t fit in. Yet Foley has done a fabulous job of getting beneath the surface glitz and showing the hidden fractures and vulnerabilities that lie behind each person’s facade. I genuinely came to sympathise with some of them and had a dark fascination with the rest.

To say too much about the plot would be to spoil the book but this really is a brilliantly plotted thriller. By using multiple voices and a dual timeline taking place both before and after the murder, Foley managed to keep me guessing right to the very end – even the identity of the victim isn’t revealed until the final few chapters! There’s a lot going on in the 400 pages with a possible serial killer, suspicious activity on the estate, and the gamekeeper’s dark past all jostling for attention amidst the secrets and lies of the guests. But Foley keeps everything neat and I never felt like the plot was running away from me – quite a feat when there are so many characters and subplots.

Combining an Agatha Christie ‘country house murder’ vibe with a modern ‘rich people problems’ twist, The Hunting Party is a fantastic crime thriller packed with twists and turns and full of that elusive page-turning quality. If 2019 continues with books of this quality, then it will be a good year indeed!

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley is published by HarperCollins and is available now as an ebook, and published in hardback on 24 January 2019, from all good booksellers including Hive, Waterstones, and Amazon. My thanks go to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an eproof of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.