The Guest List

Exactly.

Raye highlights two prime examples of this dynamic: Alex Michaelides' novel The Fury and Lucy Foley's The Guest List.

Two huge books.

Both authors rely heavily on the classic trope of the island, but they utilize the isolation in fascinatingly different ways to manipulate both the characters and the reader.

But beneath the luxury, old resentments begin to flare, hidden jealousies bubble up, and naturally, murder ensues.

Naturally.

But contrast that with Lucy Foley's The Guest List, which was a massive hit back in 2020.

That book takes place on an island off the coast of Ireland.

I love this part.

Let's look at The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware, The Guest List by Lucy Foley, and Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney.

Great selections.

In The Turn of the Key Rowan Kane takes a highly paid live-in nanny job at Heatherbrae House.

The caretaker, the nanny, is the one being ceaselessly recorded and corrected by the architecture.

That's so creepy.

Then in The Guest List, the lock shifts from digital surveillance to geographical and social confinement.

Foley builds an Agatha Christie style closed circle here.

[laughing] Here's Lucy Foley.

She's the author of novels that include The Hunting Party and The Guest List.

[audience applauding] Her new novel is titled Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.

I'd like you to give her another warmest welcome to the stage.

It has been changed over the years to remove references considered offensive to today's readers.

Still, Foley, whose provocative reads include The Guest List and The Paris Apartment, has to follow ground rules for the conservative Miss Marple.

The character could not be young.

She couldn't have a boyfriend.

I remember reading it in seventh grade and then I reread it a few years ago.

it is just so good so 10 guests they're all strangers are summoned to a private island off the coast and their host is nowhere to be found we also find out that all the guests kind of have a secret and that each guest is going to die so they've all been marked for murder and all the murders line up with a nursery rhyme and so one by one they end up dying it is such a sneaky smart book if you haven't read it or you haven't read it in a while i highly recommend okay rounding out my thriller recommendations the guest list by lucy foley i read this several years ago i rated it five stars so i must have really really loved it but the description of the book i'll actually read this verbatim because i like this part but it says a wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of agatha christie so this thriller is set on an island off the coast of ireland it is a wedding like i said and so you meet this big cast of characters, cell service is spotty, so they don't have a lot of contact with the outside world, and then someone turns up dead.

And so it's basically a little bit of a murder mystery.

If you've read Lucy Foley's books before, it's very similar in the sense that there are a ton of characters which can sometimes be a little confusing, but I do remember loving this one.

It's audio magic.

But I have to ask the purest question here, because Lucy Foley writes brilliant contemporary thrillers, right? Books like The Guest List.

Yes, very fast-paced.

But grafting that modern fast-paced multicast energy onto Jane Marple amidst all these celebrities, will Miss Marple still actually sound like Miss Marple?

She was a hardcore Christie fan and had heard about Foley's collaboration with the late mystery author's estate to release the first authorized Marple novel in 50 years.

Foley is a mystery and historical fiction author, having written best-selling novels including The Guest List and The Paris Apartment .

But my subway companion worried about someone else picking up Christie's pen.

She at least found the comfort in the fact that Foley, like Christie, is British.