Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel

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A guest steps into a gondola at the foot of a Swiss mountain, alive and well. When the car reaches the top, the guest is dead. Down at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a quiet Englishwoman of a certain age has already started watching the other guests.

It is 1950 and Miss Marple is on holiday. Her old friend Dolly Bantry, now a widow, has invited her to the Alps, along with a companion called Diana Glass. The hotel can only be reached by mountain railway. Then a blizzard closes in, the line is cut and the police cannot get through. The killer is still in the building. So is everybody else.

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is the first new Miss Marple novel in fifty years, written by Lucy Foley with the approval of the Christie estate. That is a lot of weight for one whodunnit to carry. It carries it well.

A hotel full of people with something to hide

The guest list is classic Christie. Anthony Narracott is a politician on the rise. His wife Catherine gives nothing away. Sylvia Sinclair is a film star with a reputation. Around them sit an old army friend and a sharp doctor. The war ended only five years ago, and nobody at the hotel has quite left it behind.

Foley tells the story in turns. Chapters are headed 'The Wife', 'The Star', 'The Friend' and 'The Help', and each one lets us into a different set of secrets. We never go inside Miss Marple's head. We see her as the others do, as a harmless old lady in the corner, which is exactly how she likes it. Anyone who knows the character will enjoy waiting for the suspects to find out how wrong they are.

What the critics made of it

The reviews have been warm. The Times called it 'top-notch' as continuation novels go and Foley 'an excellent writer'. Malcolm Forbes in the Boston Globe found it 'a tightly constructed, expertly paced, and fiendishly clever mystery'. Publishers Weekly said fans of golden age crime 'will adore this faithful update'.

There are some reservations. A few early reviewers found the solution easier to see through than Christie at her best, and Foley's prose is fuller and more descriptive than the brisk originals. Neither point spoils the fun. This is a snowbound puzzle with a strong sense of period, and it moves quickly.

Five voices for a story told in turns

A novel that keeps changing point of view is a natural fit for a cast recording, and HarperCollins has given this one five readers.

• Hayley Atwell
• Lucy Boynton
• Adeel Akhtar
• Mara Wilson
• Hugh Kermode

The credits do not say who reads which part, so that is something to find out as you listen. What matters is that each narrator in the book gets a voice of their own. When the chapter heading changes, the voice changes with it, and you always know whose version of events you are hearing. In a mystery where every speaker may be lying, that helps.

At just over nine hours it is a comfortable length for a week of commutes or a couple of long winter evenings.

How Lucy Foley got the job

Foley worked as an editor in book publishing before she turned to writing full time. She made her name with The Hunting Party and The Guest List, thrillers that shut a group of people away in a remote place and let the secrets come out. The Paris Apartment and The Midnight Feast followed. It is easy to see why HarperCollins and Agatha Christie Limited chose her when they announced the project in 2025.

Agatha Christie's last Miss Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, came out in 1976. Foley has said she felt the character deserved another holiday. She has also said that this is the first book she plotted from start to finish before writing a word, and that she watched only films from the 1950s while she worked on it.

You do not need to have read the old novels to follow this one, though fans will be glad to see Dolly Bantry again. The Audible free trial covers the whole book.