This book was everywhere on Waterstones tables for months, and it follows in the well worn tracks of her previous crime thrillers, starting with the excellent The Hunting Party. I had been a little disappointed in The Paris Apartment, feeling that things were getting quite samey, and the settings a little less compelling, so I resisted picking this up for a while, but did in the end.
This is a solid thriller that has a structure and themes made for our TV moment (and I think it and The Hunting Party are being adapted for TV series at the moment). There are the class elements of the posh spa hotel invading an otherwise fairly poor coastal community, as well as the interpersonal dynamics of a hotel with a demanding and overbearing business owner. The supernatural element is intertwined with the wellness/spiritual drive of Francesca’s new spa venture, and it feels like there’s a borrowing from Nine Perfect Strangers with a lot of these elements.
I did enjoy the characterisation of the vengeful guest attending the hotel’s launch under a pseudonym, as well as Fran’s troubled architect husband. The gatecrashing of the hotel was fun to read, and it’s hard not to have some sympathy for the locals! I have a particular loathing of golf courses because they cordon off green spaces, and these sorts of luxury venues do something similar, although at the same time I do appreciate their ability to maintain and keep going large estates and premises that are often historic but couldn’t be put to many other uses these days. Personally, I’d actually have enjoyed there being more on the supernatural side, and a bigger lean into that rather than the class tensions, but I think fans of that sort of content are well served by series like Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories. There is also a reasonably pleasing twist at the end, after the murder has been all worked out.
I have some pedantic grumbles that perhaps reflect more on the industry more widely, but do seem somewhat particular to Foley, in particular: why does she fear commas of address? Do we just not do those anymore? Or treat them sparingly, like a new spice, there one sentence and gone the next? This is the sort of thing that would actually provoke me to put a book down. When I used to teach English language to primary school kids, particularly those for whom English was an additional language, punctuation as a structural scaffold was vital for meaning making, and the poor punctuation practices of their native-speaking teachers a source of eternal frustration. Writers, presumably, care about the written text as a communication vehicle, and I cannot abide carelessness with it (versus, say, a strategic stylistic choice to abandon punctuation!).
If you can overlook those textual infelicities and speed through the regular déjà vu of structure and setting, this is a fairly pleasant quick read, excellent perhaps for those currently thinking about the Easter holidays now that spring has begun!
See also
These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- White Lotus (TV series)
- Death in Paradise (TV series)
- Nine Perfect Strangers (TV series)
- Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories series (including Changeling)
Read my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies now (in paperback, hardback, or on Kindle)! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Dominique Gracia 
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