The Guest List by Lucy Foley – Book Review

A murder mystery on a closed off location, in this case a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, rarely fails to elicit our interest and The Guest List is no exception. The remoteness, the difficult accessibility by boat, the island’s past history, all come together to create an atmospheric backdrop for our characters who are all thoughtfully and carefully…

…written with their own motives and dynamics between each other.

As the story progresses we find that many of the characters are intertwined with each other in more ways than we first suspect and this helps to intriguingly muddy the waters when we come to try and figure out who done “it”. In fact, the murder (no fear, there’s no spoilers, you know a murder happens but I won’t say any details), is not clearly defined until you can pick up and collect clues as you read further and further.

For this reason we don’t even know who the victim is and are kept guessing until very near the end – much of the story takes place leading up to the murder with the odd page or two looking back on the murder after it happened. This adds an extra layer of complexity which in some books might seem unnecessarily convoluted but in this case works fairly well with the style. I wouldn’t want to see it repeated too often in books but it fits in well enough here.

The characters are I think where the author has shone. Not so much as how they are described but in how they interact with each other. The dynamics at play between them all are what really help to build the tension and interest.

A decent murder-mystery.

Score: 4 / 5