The Grand Alpine Hotel, nestled in the Swiss Alps, is the perfect place for a holiday. Spectacular views, the finest ski slopes, exquisite ski slopes… and the chance for clandestine meetings.

A popular actress. A politician destined for the very top. His long-suffering wife. His friend from the war with a troubled past. A doctor with secrets of his own. A dangerous combination of personalities and shared histories that has the potential to lead to tragedy. And when a gondola arrives at the top of mountain with the body of one of the guests lying on the flaw, that potential has been realised.

But this is only the beginning, and someone is enacting a plan. A plan that only has one obstacle that the killer had not anticipated. Another guest, sitting quietly in the corner, watching everything. The only person who can stop a disaster from taking place… Miss Jane Marple.

Well, here it is. After five (?) Poirot continuations that, while clearly making money for the Christie estate, haven’t gone down too well in the circle of classic mystery fans that I belong to. It was only a matter of time before Miss Marple got brought back as well. There was a collection of short stories four years ago, each by a different female author, that I thought was a lot closer to Christie than the Poirot books were (with a couple of notable exceptions) and as I said in my review back then, the best story to me was Evil In Small Places by Lucy Foley, definitely trying to channel Christie. So I was pleased when the author of the inevitable novel was announced. I held out a lot of hope for this novel.

And I started reading this one when I got the review copy and my first impressions weren’t great. We had multiple narrators. It is written in the present tense. It seemed to be, like the Poirots, an author writing in their own style and the inserting the classic sleuth into the story. I’ll freely admit, I was bracing myself for a “here we go again” review/rant.

And then, very quickly, I stopped noticing the structure and the tense. Because despite writing in her own style, structurally speaking, Lucy Foley clearly gets what makes an Agatha Christie story work. I was gripped all the way through. The plot is clever – and the sort of thing that Christie would do – there are clues laid for the reader, and Foley does a really good job of pulling a surprise (for me at least) with a relatively small cast of characters.

Miss Marple, on holiday with Dolly Bantry, feels right. She sits in the background, assisting the police investigation, until she has to take matters in her own hands, a Nemesis, if you like.

Oh, one thing – don’t go in thinking, because of the blurb, that it’s a locked cable car mystery. When a man gets in at the bottom with

I could go on, but obviously there’s a danger of spoilers. I’ll just say this. When I read The Monogram Murders, I was disappointed and was very trepidatious about reading another in the series. When I read Murder At The Alpine Hotel, I almost forgot I wasn’t reading a genuine Christie novel and I can’t wait to read another from Lucy Foley. I know this isn’t the real thing, but, for me, it’s a damn good substitute. You know what, I’ll probably go back and read some of Lucy’s other books too…

Murder At The Alpine Hotel is out today from Harper Collins. Many thanks for the e-review copy.