...a disparate group of guests make their way to a remote hotel in the Catskill mountains. Lapena swiftly takes away all trappings of modernity by enveloping the hotel in an ice storm – no reception, no phone lines, no electricity, no internet – so that, when a body, is discovered their first morning, the group find themselves in the middle of a classic mystery ... Just in case it’s not obvious enough that we’re in the middle of a homage to classic crime fiction, one of the guests finds an old Agatha Christie on the bedside table.
Told from multiple perspectives, An Unwanted Guest opens as a group of guests arrives for a weekend getaway at Mitchell’s Inn ... after a scream shatters the guests peace, and a body...is found at the bottom of the inn’s staircase, relaxation and pampering are out of the question. Especially after a second body — that of a mysterious novelist who has sequestered herself to her room to write — is discovered.
An Unwanted Guest is a nice shout-out to Dame Agatha, and Lapena sets things up like a classic whodunit. She introduces the characters and then sets them in a circumstance from which they cannot immediately escape. When guests begin to turn up dead, one by one, it will be a mad scramble to identify who the unwanted guest is before everyone is doomed ... very much a modern-day telling of a classic Agatha Christie plotline that is masterfully designed. Lapena knows and respects this type of murder mystery, and the end result is a novel that demands to be read in one sitting --- preferably not while you are staying at a quaint little inn or a bed and breakfast in the midst of a winter snowfall!
Winter in the Catskills is just the time and place for a woodsy mountain getaway, at least for this ensemble cast. When the Mitchell’s Inn’s weekend guests arrive, 'all is covered in a pure, muffling white snow,' and they are ready to relax. It’s not to be. The first evening, Dana Hart tumbles down the grand staircase to her death. It seems to be an accident, but David Paley’s lawyerly instincts lead him to suspect murder ... Readers who prefer likable characters won’t find many here, except perhaps Candace White, an author who was hoping for a quiet place to write her new book. ... suffers from choppy, repetitive prose and an uninspiring reveal ... Dame Agatha did it much, much better.
This disappointing thriller from bestseller Lapena riffs on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None ... The first evening, a young woman, Dana Hart, is found dead at the bottom of the stairs. To lawyer David Paley, it doesn’t look like an accident, and he suspects Dana’s fiancé, Matthew Hutchinson. The problem is that there’s a winter storm raging, and the inn is without power and a generator. Each guest is hiding a dark secret, and as the secrets are revealed and accusations are hurled, the body count rises, and it seems that no one is safe. The pace picks up in the third act, but it’s not enough to save a narrative populated with emotionally distant characters and paint-by-the-numbers murders.
