Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel - Lucy Foley
HarperCollins
Release Date: September 22, 2026
Rating: 📚📚📚 (2.5)
Some spoilers below
Synopsis: High in the Swiss Alps, accessible only by a single, winding railway, stands the luxurious Grand Alpine Hotel. With glorious mountain views and exclusive access to powdery slopes, it draws guests from far and wide.
The notorious actress.
The high-flying politician.
The society wife.
The reckless friend.
The shrewd doctor.
But not everyone is here for a winter holiday.
Beneath the champagne and furs, dark histories simmer; old grudges emerge like cracks in the ice.
And someone is watching from the shadows. A polite, unassuming woman with an extraordinary mind: Miss Marple.
When a body is found and a blizzard cuts off all escape, only Miss Marple can connect the clues before the killer strikes again. Because it isn’t a question of who has a motive, but who’s next…
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Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is being touted as a "new Agatha Christie" book, written by Lucy Foley and starring Miss Marple.
It isn't. It's a historcal mystery, set in 1950, with a cast of set characters that will be familiar to most readers, with a nominal Miss Marple and Dolly Bantry thrown in there to lure in Agatha Christie fans and a few Marple Easter eggs randomly tossed in.
The plot is basic: an obnoxious politician and his wife go to a luxurious Swiss hotel, his out of place war friend is there, his glamorous Hollywood mistress is there. He's clearly up to no good. No one is sorry when he winds up dead, but it does get in the way of everyone's holiday. Miss Marple, Dolly Bantry and her companion Diana Glass are there on holiday and chip in to help the investigation. More deaths happen. No one is who they say they are.
The story is told from multiple first person POVs that (with the overblown exception of the actress) largely sounded the same to me. None of the characters were especially likable and I kept reading mostly to see if I was right about the guesses I had about everyone's secrets than because I was invested in the book. Miss Marple and Dolly both sounded more like they were just repeating lines from the different movies or tv shows than anything else. The author seemed to spend more time describing the scenery than getting into the characters or developing a good plot. There's a lot of scenery description.
As a historical mystery, it was so-so. As a new Miss Marple story, it doesn't add anything to the character, or the series, and I'm not sure why anyone needs this book. If you're an Agatha Christie fan and are really curious, I'd recommend getting it from the library instead of paying for it outright. Personally, I was disappointed.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
