All the Rage by Cara Hunter - Review

I started a couple of books at the beginning of October that I just couldn't get in to. One was about a bisexual black girl and I was really hoping to love it, but I couldn't gel with the story and gave up about fifty pages in. The next was a crime thriller set in Derbyshire that I was so-so about and would probably have finished, until the central character, a woman who kept going on about being a mother, talked about not pursuing a diagnosis of autism or ADHD for her son (who is heavily coded as such in the narrative) because she didn't want him to be "labelled". I stopped reading right there. I'm a fan of diagnoses and labels, what can I say. They're not bad things.

Anyway I decided to read Cara Hunter's new book which I got on Netgalley, so thanks to Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read this book. I received a free electronic copy of this book for review but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

You already know that I love the DI Adam Fawley books. I've read and enjoyed the first three and I think they're some of the best crime novels around at the moment. I have had a bit of a problem with some other thrillers that are just too gory, especially when dealing with the brutality of women. I'm thinking especially of the Peter James books, which I had to give up on. I've found Cara Hunter's books to not be so gory, although I will say that this one is probably the goriest so far.

I want to also say that there is a trans character in this book and I was a little bit apprehensive about how she would be treated. I was pleasantly surprised. There are some transphobic comments from a couple of people, but the character mostly has the police absolutely behind her and in particular has detective Erica Somer to rely on. I am happy that the character didn't get totally ripped to pieces and wasn't disbelieved.

So Adam Fawley is going through some anxiety with his wife Alex, with whom he is newly reconciled. There's an attack on a young woman, Faith, and there are some similarities with an old case, dubbed the Roadside Rapist by the press, which Adam was involved in and prosecuted. Adam is convinced that the crime has nothing to do with the Roadside Rapist, who is now serving a long prison sentence but who has always maintained his innocence.

Then another girl goes missing and there are even more similarities with the Roadside Rapist. Can they really have got the wrong man nearly twenty years ago?

There are a number of red herrings within the book, all of which I think worked well. Adam and Alex are going through some things after the death of their son (revealed in previous books) and Alex is suffering quite severe anxiety. There are other points of view from Adam's, told in the third person, and I liked the focus on the female detective, Everett and Somer, but I would have liked more of Gislingham and Quinn like in previous books.

I wasn't quite sure where the book was going to go - at one point I thought I'd worked it out, but I was really wrong! I liked it, I'm going to give it four out of five.

All the Rage by Cara Hunter will be published on January the 23rd, 2020.