The Search Party
the most gripping and unputdownable crime thriller of 2024
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4.1 • 14 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Pre-order ONE DARK NIGHT, the claustrophobic new thriller coming from Hannah Richell in July 2025!
‘Hannah Richell's The Search Party is a compelling thriller told with real emotional insight and depth. An absolute page-turner!’ Lucy Clarke
Five old friends.
One glamping weekend.
A storm that will change everything.
Max and Annie Kingsley have left the London rat race to set up a glamping site in the wilds of Cornwall. They invite old university friends – TV star Dominic, doctor and new mum Kira, and free-spirited Jim and Suze – and their children for a trial weekend but the reunion quickly veers off-course.
First, there’s The Incident around the campfire on the first night. The following afternoon, a storm quickly develops off the rugged North Coast. When one of their group goes missing, all hell breaks loose. And as the winds batter the bell-tents, emotions run high and tension mounts for all the characters.
Who is lying in hospital, who has gone missing and who is the body on the beach below the cliffs . . .?
Gripping, cleverly structured and brimming with secrets and lies, this is a masterclass in narrative tension and a chilling exploration of the ways in which aspiration and anxiety collide. It will keep you guessing until the last page.
'In this compelling, beautifully-observed story of a Cornish glamping trip gone spectacularly wrong, Hannah Richell never lets up with the tension and suspense. This is a best-in-class family thriller you'll read in one sitting’ Kate Riordan, author of Heatwave
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s a common motif in thrillers—a group of friends go away together and everything goes horribly wrong. In this fifth novel from British Australian writer Hannah Richell, the holiday-from-hell location is a remote, cliffside, Cornish glamping site, with no mobile reception, where an almighty storm is about to roll in. What could possibly go right? Naturally, a bunch of old university friends, and their children, are about to have the worst weekend of their lives. Simmering resentments reach boiling point, while jarring parenting styles create havoc. Much of the tension revolves around rude, peacocking TV talent show judge Dom, who appears to be based on someone very familiar. Peppered with plenty of the required secrets and twists, it’s a pacy, easy read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The appealing latest from Richell (The River Home) injects new life into a familiar narrative scaffolding. In a prologue, a girl jumps off the edge of a cliff after an unidentified man urges her to do so. The action then shifts to an interview between the Cornish police and Dominic Davies, a Simon Cowell–like judge on the fictional reality TV show Star Search, about an unspecified tragedy. Davies says that he and his family were invited to visit his university friend, Max Kingsley, at a new glamping resort he'd set up with his wife, Annie, in rural England. After Davies concedes that he thinks everyone at that gathering did things they regret, Richell rewinds the narrative back two days to flesh out what led to the police interrogation, alternating perspectives and highlighting what each character eventually shares with Cornish authorities. She cleverly doles out key details in increments: Annie asks for news from the local hospital during her interrogation; several characters refer to the findings of a search party before Richell reveals what they are. While the book's Rashomon structure is hardly original, Richell utilizes it well, providing her large cast with distinct voices and insights. It's a diverting puzzle.
