Lethal Luxury: 6 Novels Set in Decadent Locales

I don’t know about you, but I read to escape. To leave the mundane world behind. To dive into a setting completely different from my own. And to me, few things are more escapist than novels set within a luxurious, glamorous world, especially when the plot is tinged with darkness.

When I started my new book, The Midnight Guests, I was itching to write a hotel novel. Hotels give you everything as a writer. A big cast, a glorious backdrop, a dash of sex and scandal, and the opportunity to play with the strange psychology of so many rich, complicated people, crowded into one gorgeous building.

My novel tells the story of Diana Gold, owner and impresario, throwing open the doors to the most exclusive new hotel in London. The crème de la crème of the social world is there—millionaires, gamblers, royalty, politicians. It’s a career-defining moment for Diana. But behind the scenes, she’s fighting for her life. And when a body is discovered in the depths of the building, her night starts to spiral out of control.

I loved writing Diana, helping her to build her sumptuous house of cards, the Hotel Artemis. It’s fifteen floors of Art Deco ostentation, secrets hidden on every floor. Because a luxury setting is also the perfect crucible for drama. It’s a world within a world, running to its own rules and codes, writhing with themes of power and influence and class. Every guest has a secret desire of their own.

And oh, how I loved writing those guests. Cleo van der Meer, the headstrong, twenty-something Manhattanite descending on London to escape her oppressive family. Polly and Robert Fox-Stanton, the political power couple staying in the suite next door, luring Cleo into a strange game of their own. The gamblers betting their lives away down in the casino. The adulterers, the schemers, the dreamers, knocking back highballs on the terrace.

And behind the scenes, the waiters and chambermaids sluicing smoothly down the back stairs, conducting their own private business…

There’s something endlessly appealing, I think, about stories told in the pressure-cooker environment of a luxury setting. Your characters are on show, performing for one another. They’re acutely conscious of their status. There are tiny power-plays going on all over the place: at the bar, in the casino, over the dinner table, in the lavish suites.

And when you throw death and destruction into the mix, things grow more heightened still. There is a delicious irony, as a writer, of allowing your characters’ deadly, ugly urges to play out beneath the glittering chandeliers of a seemingly perfect world.

Here are six brilliant novels that thread the darkest psychology into rarefied settings to completely thrilling effect.

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Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

It’s a classic for a reason! Not a hotel, but operating almost exactly like one—those gorgeous sleeping-cabins, those intriguing guests, those watchful waiters, dozens of suspicious glances darting back and forth across the plush dining carriage. Christie draws you into her closed setting with such skill, tantalizing you with both the exquisite details and the questions lurking at the heart of her plot.

Alex Michaelides, The Fury

Here we swap Christie’s snowed-in locomotive for a private Greek island in a contemporary setting, its shores lashed by powerful winds that seem to possess their own forbidding personality. This is a stylish, labyrinthine thriller telling the story of a former film star and the circle gathered on the island, but it’s also a gripping meditation on art, loyalty and revenge.

I’ll never dare visit Mykonos, now.

Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Another classic—but there is no one better at writing into the deadliest corners of the human psyche than du Maurier. Manderley, the infamous house at the heart of this justifiably-adored novel, is a peculiarly English vision of quiet luxury. A nameless young bride arrives at a beautiful mansion on the Cornish coast, only to be stalked at every turn by the dark memory of its former mistress—and the housekeeper determined to remind our protagonist just how unwelcome she is.

Never has “marrying up” looked like such a mistake.

Alessandra Ranelli, Murder at the Hotel Orient

Everybody is talking about this debut whodunnit, a novel set in an infamous love hotel at the heart of Vienna, where the concierge is fighting to catch a killer and clear her name in the most sensitive of surroundings.

I’ve been dying to read it, and Alessandra Ranelli is already a legend in the writer community for her generosity and sense of fun. Make sure you get your hands on this!

Nita Prose, The Maid

Already a modern classic. Molly works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, but quickly becomes ensnared in a murder investigation that unfolds all the way from the penthouse down through every corner of the building. Not for nothing did it spawn a series of wildly popular sequels—this novel is clever, carefully-drawn and Nita Prose knows just how to conjure the glamour and grit of a hotel operation through the eyes of the staff.

Tom Hindle, Death in the Arctic

Like Agatha Christie, Tom Hindle is a master at taking an intriguing, must-visit setting—a magnificent ocean liner, a fabulous wedding on Lake Garda, a hotel in the Costa Rican jungle—and unfurling a carefully-layered mystery within it. I thought this was such a distinctive and clever setup—a luxury airship on a specially-chartered trip to the North Pole—and when you read a Tom Hindle book you always know you are in safe hands.

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So there we have it, a smattering of brilliant novels whipping up so many of the escapist ingredients that remind me why luxury and suspense are the best of bedfellows…

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