Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is the first authorized novel featuring Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple—and Lucy Foley’s take on the iconic detective, which comes 50 years after Christie’s final novel starring her, is worth the wait.
Jane Marple is a long way from St Mary Mead. It’s 1950, and Miss Marple is visiting the Grand Alpine, a luxury hotel nestled in the Swiss Alps. She’s accompanied by her friend Dolly Bantry and Dolly’s paid companion, and the women are looking forward to taking in majestic views while indulging in the hotel’s many amenities. They soon meet their fellow guests, including a rising British politician and his wife, a glamorous American actor, a young doctor, a French detective and a low-level crook. When a body is discovered, Miss Marple deduces that many of the hotel guests had reason to want that person dead. Then a snowstorm traps the remaining guests at the Grand Alpine, bodies begin piling up, and Miss Marple must use her trademark observational skills and knowledge of human behavior to figure out who is behind the brutal killings.
Foley (The Paris Apartment, The Guest List) pays homage to Christie and her beloved detective while maintaining her contemporary thriller roots. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is spiritually a work of Christie—all the characters feel authentic to the time period and their stations in life, and red herrings, clues and misdirection abound. Perhaps most importantly, Foley’s Miss Marple is nearly indistinguishable from Christie’s as she shrewdly solves the mystery through keen observation and her wealth of personal knowledge. And yet, this book is also distinctly Foley, featuring her suspense-driven storytelling and rotating cast of first-person narrators. The electric combination results in a fast-moving, tightly plotted mystery set firmly in the 1950s that somehow feels modern, too.
Fans of Christie, Foley and intricately plotted novels will be extremely satisfied with this new installment.