Agatha Christie's Miss Marple has spent most of her career solving murders within walking distance of her cottage in St. Mary Mead. That changes with Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, the first new Marple mystery in half a century, written by The Guest List author Lucy Foley at the invitation of the Christie estate. This time, the elderly detective is on holiday at a glamorous Swiss ski chalet, complete with a hidden speakeasy, ice-skating waiters and some distinctly unforgiving mountains.
Foley told Condé Nast Traveler that the setting came first. She wanted to give Marple a proper trip — in the original books she only gets one — and to play against 1950s mountain thrillers by Ian Fleming and Eric Ambler, swapping the rugged male heroes for two elderly women: Marple and her friend Dolly Bantry. The result is a whodunnit set about five years after the Second World War, with British, French, Italian, American and German guests sharing a train up the mountain, still bristling at old enmities while rationing-era Brits look, as one character puts it, hungry and grey.
The research reads like an Alpine itinerary in its own right. Foley's base was Chamonix in the French Alps, with drives on to Zermatt and St. Moritz in Switzerland, and through the Mont Blanc tunnel to Le Corbier and Italian resorts. Her favourite discovery: the Refuge du Montenvers, a hotel above Chamonix reached by a little red train. Once the last train leaves, guests have the mountains to themselves — an atmosphere that directly shaped the novel's hotel. She also dug up vintage photos from St. Moritz's Badrutt's Palace and Kulm hotels showing waiters in full black tie performing tricks on ice with loaded Champagne trays, a detail she lifted straight into the book.
There's practical inspiration here too. Foley skied the Vallée Blanche above Chamonix, the guided route down the Mer de Glace glacier that involves crampons, ropes and a narrow ridge walk, and she writes evocatively about how the Alps have always balanced beauty against danger — a shift she traces to the Romantics, before whom the mountains were seen as hostile, dragon-haunted places.
For travellers, this is a nice excuse to plan an Alpine trip with a literary angle. Chamonix makes a strong base: you can ride the Montenvers train to the glacier, sleep overnight at the refuge if you book ahead, and add a day on the Vallée Blanche if you're a confident skier with a guide. St. Moritz, a train ride away, delivers the grand-hotel history — Badrutt's Palace and the Kulm both helped invent Alpine winter tourism, and the Kulm still has its secret bar. Zermatt and the Matterhorn sit within driving distance for a longer loop through France, Switzerland and Italy.
The book itself lands for Christie fans and armchair travellers alike — and if it sends a few readers up a red mountain railway with a paperback in their bag, Foley would surely count that as a win.
