' So where could they have gone?' ' So what are my next steps going to be?' 'She examines the glass balustrade in front of her. This is murder'-as do what seem to be the protagonist’s questions to herself about how to move things along.

As she slowly reasons her way through the unfolding situation, her deductions of even the most obvious points appear in italics-' That means Laure has another phone.' ' This…it isn't an accident. As overloaded, grisly, and ultimately silly as Pearse's locked-room debut may be, the biggest mystery is how Elin ever made it out of the police academy.

Elin's creepy feelings about the trip are quickly confirmed as a storm cuts off access to the mountain, a receptionist is kidnapped, a dead body is found in the snow, and Laure disappears. Isaac is throwing a party to celebrate his engagement to Laure, assistant manager at the hotel, which has been the focus of local controversy due to its shadowy history. The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (Bantam, £12.A hotel built on the grounds of a sanatorium has more dead bodies than paying guests.Ī police detective on sabbatical after flubbing a case, Elin Warner travels with her boyfriend, Will, to Le Sommet, a remote, glass-walled, five-star hotel in the Swiss Alps, at the invitation of her estranged brother, Isaac. It would look great in a limited TV series on a streaming platform. The writer spent part of her twenties there and she evokes a breathtaking view of snow-covered mountain ranges seen through the sparkling windows of a high-end accommodation that most of us could never see the inside of. Le Sommet is a fictional luxury hotel converted from an abandoned sanatorium high in the real Alpine municipality of Crans-Montana. What Pearse absolutely has going for her is an incredible setting. It’s like Christie got distracted by a Resident Evil video game while pottering with Poirot. But smashing that with ultra-violent torture scenes carried out by a gas mask-wearing villain can sometimes be jarring. The enforced mixing of the super-rich with the middle and lower classes is straight out of any number of Christie books. Pearse lives in Devon, the writing home of Agatha Christie, so she can be forgiven for taking a little influence from her.

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Book review the sanatorium