For the first time in 50 years, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple is getting a new novel — and instead of pottering around her home village of St Mary Mead, she's checking into a Swiss ski hotel. Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is written by Lucy Foley, author of The Guest List, who was asked by the Christie estate to put her own spin on the character. The result drops the Victorian spinster into territory usually reserved for 007 and Sherlock Holmes: rugged mountains, hidden speakeasies and a cosy chalet-style hotel far above the valley floor.

Foley told Condé Nast Traveller that the estate explicitly wanted her take rather than a paint-by-numbers Christie, and that the idea clicked when she realised Marple only takes one holiday in the original books. The setting is also a deliberate riff on 1950s masculine thrillers by writers like Ian Fleming and Eric Ambler — except this time two elderly women, Marple and her friend Mrs Bantry, hold all the power.

The book is grounded in serious research. Foley skied the Vallée Blanche above Chamonix, complete with crampons, ropes and crevasse warnings, and travelled through Zermatt, St Moritz and Italian resorts to get the texture right. The hotel itself was inspired by a real find: the Refuge du Montenvers above Chamonix, reached by a little red train, where once the last train leaves you're alone with the mountains. She also mined hospitality history — at St Moritz's Badrutt's Palace and Kulm hotels, she found archive photos of waiters in full black tie ice-skating with Champagne trays, a detail that went straight into the novel.

The story is set around five years after the Second World War, when Europeans from former enemy nations are thrown together on the train up the mountain, rationing still fresh in British memory and wartime secrets bubbling under the surface. Foley was drawn to the porous mountain passes near the Swiss-French-Italian border and what they meant during the war — backstories several of her characters have rewritten for themselves.

For travellers, the interview doubles as an alpine itinerary. Chamonix makes a strong base, with the Montenvers railway and Mer de Glace glacier within easy reach, while Zermatt and St Moritz showcase the grand old hotel tradition the book draws on. The Kulm even has a real hidden bar, the kind of secret space Foley says makes hotels perfect murder-mystery settings: anonymous, democratic and full of people who might not be who they claim. Christie fans planning a winter trip could do worse than following Foley's route — though maybe skip the roped-up glacier walk unless you're properly equipped. Story via Condé Nast Traveller UK.