Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel finds Lucy Foley, a very popular thriller writer whom I’ve never read, taking over the world’s best-selling novelist’s second-best known character. Because I’ve never read Foley’s other novels, I can’t tell if she seems like a natural fit for Miss Marple, but from the evidence presented in this first attempt, I’m leaning towards “No.”
For “A Miss Marple Mystery” per the cover, there’s fairly little of Miss Marple herself here. While this isn’t terribly unusual in Christie’s original novels, it still feels a little silly for a new writer to keep her so firmly on the sideline. Instead, Foley shifts narration between a half-dozen or so characters, none of whom have a very distinctive voice.
From the title, you will probably have guessed that the plot features Miss Marple on vacation at a Swiss ski chalet. She is accompanying a friend of hers from St. Mary Mead, the quaint English village home to a suspicious number of murders in Christie’s originals. Also with them is Diana, a former civil servant now serving as a paid companion. Diana is one of the principal narrators. The other guests at the chalet include a British politician and his refined socialite wife, a Hollywood sex symbol aiming to reignite her fling with the politician, a mysterious drifter totally unsuitable as a guest of the hotel, and a bevy of skiing nuns.
The plot, such as it is, involves some stolen gold buried during the war amid some treachery among the French resistance. Who knows about the gold and how is one of the central mysteries, though from the shallowness of Foley’s interest in it you could be forgiven for not caring much about it yourself.
It would, perhaps, be silly to expect a new Miss Marple novel to match the excellence of the originals. But I suppose I would at least like to see some evidence of an attempt to excel. There’s nothing in this book that goes beyond, “oh, I bet it would be fun to write an old-style mystery novel.” There’s little care taken in terms of plotting or pacing or intriguing the reader with potential solutions. The case is resolved with a fairly absurd denouement and some clunky action beneath being attached to the name Agatha Christie.
