Making A Killing by Cara Hunter - Review

As you may know, I really like Cara Hunter's books, especially the DI Adam Fawley series. In fact I've read all of them, and periodically I check Netgalley to see if another book has been put there. For ages there hasn't been any, sadly. But then I got an email from HarperCollins offering me the chance to read this brand new book in the series. I was so pleased and of course said yes immediately, and then picked this up just a couple of weeks later. 

I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

When I read the premise for this book I couldn't believe what I was reading! Way back in the first book, reviewed here on this blog, Daisy Mason went missing. She was eight years old and her body was never found, but her mother Sharon is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of her daughter. The next few books took place over only a couple of years. We were last in Oxford with Adam in 2018, when his new baby daughter Lily was only a few months old. I did wonder at that time what Cara would do to jump forward in time, as that book was written in 2022. Well, wonder no more. 

It's 2024. Adam's team has been disbanded; he is working in counter terrorism or something. Quinn is in uniform high up somewhere. Erica Somer is working with young victims in the court system. But the gang is getting back together, because... 

There are new cops around too, in Gloucestershire. They include Triona Bradley, who I really liked - I would like to see more from her in future for sure. A dog walker (it's always the dog walkers) finds a body in a shallow grave near an old oak tree that has a gruesome history to do with witchcraft. The police don't know who the woman who has been killed is, but the duct tape that has been used to tie her up contains a hair. And that hair belongs to Daisy Mason. 

She is therefore still alive, and would be now sixteen. Adam is called to Gloucestershire to head up reopening the case and going back over everything that the team thought they knew back in 2016. (Cara acknowledges herself that this would never have been allowed to happen, but let's go with it for the sake of storytelling). Quinn and Everett are back. They have to find out where Daisy has been and of course, they have to tell Sharon that she's innocent - as she's always protested - and release her from prison. 

Meanwhile Bradley and co are on with finding out who the body in the grave is, as well as trying to find out how she is related to Daisy and Daisy's case. I liked the story but found Daisy a little bit OTT in some ways. I did have to suspend my belief a few times, but I found it compelling. I did also think there were just a couple too many characters which made it sometimes hard to keep track of who was who. But in all I liked the book and am giving it four out of five. 

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter - Review

I got this book from Harper Collins via Netgalley, so thank you very much to them for granting me access to it. I received an electronic copy of the book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I've read all of Cara Hunter's previous books - reviewed here - and so far they've all concentrated on DI Adam Fawley and his team. I thought Murder in the Family was the next in the series, so was surprised when this started and it turns out to be a standalone! I'm not complaing though, Cara is an excellent writer and I was soon caught up in the story.

The book isn't told in prose, instead it's told in script. The idea is that the scripts form eight episodes of a TV show about an unsolved murder. We also get some viewer comments and some newspaper reviews of the show. But otherwise, we are in script mode, where several people keep revealing things about the murder. Everything is done very much to make good television, so there's lots of drama and cliffhangers for episodes to end on. I found it quite easy to read. I did think there were some errors, but I am assuming those will have been ironed out in the final edits. 

So, the mystery concerns Luke Ryder. He was 27ish, Australian, and married to a woman over a decade older than him. She, Caroline, had been previously married and has three children - Maura, Amelia, and Guy. Guy is the director of the TV show, wanting to shed some light on the tragedy that devastated his family. He was ten years old at the time of the murder. Luke was supposed to go out with his wife, Caroline, to a drinks party, and Guy's grandma was supposed to babysit. But Luke decided to babysit. Caroline took her daughters to the cinema, then went to the party. Caroline now has dementia so can't be interviewed. It's twenty years later and Guy is an acclaimed filmmaker. His sister Maura is interviewed, but Amelie isn't. There are copies of text messages between the two of them which prove they're hiding something. Maura came home from the cinema early, and she found the body. But what is she hiding?

Then it turns out there was someone arrested that night. A black man called Martin was found in the garden of the (massive) house and arrested as he had a small amount of drugs on him. Police thought he might have been dealing to Luke. He is now a journalist... and just happens to be one of the people on the TV show. 

The others include a lawyer, an ex Metropolitan police officer, who was involved in the original case, an ex USA police officer, and more. They're all pertinent to the investigation, in ways that are shown throughout in absolutely brilliant fashion. And is Luke Ryder even who he said he was...?

I enjoyed the book and read it quickly. I'm giving it four out of five.  

Murder in the Family will be published on the 6th of July 2023. 

Hope to Die by Cara Hunter - Review

You know I love Cara Hunter's books - I've read all the previous Adam Fawley books and had ordered this so that it appeared on my Kindle the day it came out. It feels like forever since one came out, and in the book we're only three months after the events of the last book. Adam and Alex's new baby, Lily, is now three months old. That means it's still 2018, and I do worry how the author can keep writing these books without skipping time forward a bit as it's now 2022. Oh well! I'm just glad there's a new book and I picked it up immediately.

At the beginning of the book police are called to a manor in the country where a man has been shot. The owners, Richard and Margaret Swann are determined that the young man was a burglar and that they shot him in self defence. However, Adam and his team don't believe them. The young man has no posessions or identity stuff on him. He can't be identified visually either. So DNA is taken from him. The team starts investigating and finds that the Swanns aren't who they say they are - and Adam realises who they are just as the DNA comes back. Their daughter, Camilla Rowan, is currently serving at least 17 years for murdering her newborn baby. Although a body was never found, and although Camilla swore that she passed the baby over to its biological father, and even given that Camilla did this with two other children, she was found guilty of killing the baby and the Swanns had to change their names and move house in order to escape the abuse sent towards them. 

But now it turns out that the young man killed in their house was Camilla's son, their grandson. Did the Swanns know that? Did Camilla know he had made contact with them? Witnesses say that it seemed like he arrived and went up to the front door, and other things like that. But the team can't find exactly who he is or where he came from. 

Most of this book is told from Adam's point of view, which is fine, but I missed seeing a lot of Ev's point of view or either Gislingham or Quinn's. That's really my only criticism of the book because I really enjoyed the mystery and the various red herrings that were present. I loved the end - it had a real tense aspect to it. I'm giving this five out of five and as ever I'm really looking forward to the next one! 

The Whole Truth by Cara Hunter - Review

As you'll already know, I really love Cara Hunter's DI Adam Fawley books, which are set in Oxford and centre around Fawley and his team. I always really look forward to a new book, and this time I was lucky enough to be invited to be an early reader of this one via Netgalley. So my many thanks go to Penguin Random House for letting me read this. I received a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The book starts just a few weeks after the end of the last one, All the Rage. Alex, Adam's wife, is now eight months pregnant and she feels like someone is watching her. She keeps seeing a white van outside the house, and is convinced it's to do with Gavin Parrie, the 'Roadside Rapist' from previous books who is now out on licence. 

Meanwhile, Ev and Quinn are called to one of the Oxford colleges, where a student called Caleb Morgan makes an allegation of sexual assault by one of his professors. Marina Fisher is very well thought of and very high up in her profession. Caleb has been babysitting her child Tobin, and was there on the night that he alleges he was sexually assaulted.

Fawley's team start out investigating the assault. Then a woman's body turns up on a railway line nearby, and although it is staged to look like a suicide, it soon becomes clear she's been murdered. The team starts to look into her life, but things become more complicated when Adam himself comes under suspicion.

There's so many twists and turns in this book and I loved every single one of them. I did guess a couple but was kept surprised too. I really think Cara Hunter has such a good way of making us love all the characters and of weaving all the storylines together. I think this is the best of her books so far, and I am so excited for what's coming next. 

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.

In the Dark by Cara Hunter - Review

I reserved the second in this series at my local library, since I've already read the first and third ones. I am really enjoying this new detective series and am really looking forward to the next one.

In this book, a man is refurbishing a house and his builders go into the cellar. There's a problem with the party wall and in frustration he knocks part of it away, going through to next door. Then, in the cellar next door, he sees the faces of a young woman, and a small child.

They've been locked in the cellar for what looks like years. The woman can't speak and she also appears to reject the child. The elderly man who lives in the house, Dr Harper, is frail and suffering from Alzheimers. He has no recollection of the woman and child, but is he covering up his crimes? DI Adam Fawley and his team are back on the case.

Meanwhile, the house in question backs on to the house of a woman who also went missing a couple of years ago. Someone else came under suspicion then, but nothing ever happened and her body was never found. Adam is determined to find out what happened to her and how her toddler ended up abandoned several miles away.

There's all kinds of red herrings and loose threads in this book, as per usual, and I really liked it. There's less of the reporting and comments from the general public, which I have to say I liked more. I'm giving this five out of five as it was my favourite so far.

No Way Out by Cara Hunter - Review

As I enjoyed the first in the DI Adam Fawley series recently, I made a note to read the next two pretty soon. I'm trying really hard to not buy books currently as recently I've had quite a few that I had preordered arrive. Plus of course I already own around 900 books. So I decided instead to not read any of those but to reserve another of Cara Hunter's books from the library. I actually reserved both. This one arrived first so even though it's the third in the series I decided to start it. Often crime novels will hark back to previous books but not give spoilers out so that each one can be read as a standalone, and that's exactly what happened here. I got a bit of the story of the second novel, but that just intrigued me and made me want to read it more!

This book is set just after Christmas, in early 2018. Adam Fawley is called to a house fire in the early hours of the morning. Felix House, on Southey Road in Oxford, is lived in by Michael Esmond and his wife Samantha, and their two children Matty and Zachary. Zachary is found dead in the nursery upstairs. Matty is taken to hospital and later dies of his injuries. Samantha is found in the remains of the house, but Michael is nowhere to be found.

Clearly police are eager to talk to him so they contact his brother, who is on a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and his employer, the university, who have had a complaint of sexual assault made against him. They don't seem to be getting anywhere very fast.

As before, this story is told from several different points of view. There's first person narrative from Adam himself. I find him a likeable detective who doesn't seem to suffer from the same narcissism that a lot do. There's third person narratives from some of his team - DC Somer, DC Everett, DC Quinn, and acting DS Gislingham. Then there's newspaper reports mixed in which often included members of the public's comments, which are often of the witch hunt variety. Then there's passages about what happened to the family in the months running up to the fire, which often reveal things that you as the reader don't realise are pertinent until later. I like the way these books are written - it feels quite modern and fresh.

I raced through this, finishing it on Friday lunchtime while sitting outside in the grass. I can't wait to read the next one, and I've lent the first one to my mum because I want her to like it too!

Close to Home by Cara Hunter - Review

I got this book recently from Janet in the book swap, and it reminded me how much I really wanted to read it. It had been on my wishlist for ages, since I read a review of it on my friend Jo's site, I think. I do like a police procedural; I find them easy to read and not too taxing on the brain.

So in Close to Home, a little girl called Daisy Mason has gone missing from a family party. Supposedly dressed in a daisy costume, no one saw her after around 11pm. Was she taken by a random stranger, by someone at the party, or by someone closer to home? DI Adam Fawley knows that often it is someone within the family.

And he's not short of suspects. Daisy's dad Barry is a builder, has no alibi. He's also been on dating websites. He says he was driving around before the party, but it turns out that could have been when Daisy disappeared. Her mum Sharon is cold, keeping very much to herself, and isn't behaving how people think she "should" after Daisy's disappearance. Daisy's brother Leo, only slightly older than her, is odd too, clearly keeping secrets and finding life difficult.

Parts of the book are told from Adam's point of view, which I liked, but found it frustrating how we were drip fed the story of what had recently happened in his family. This is the first book, though, so I'm sure we'll see more of Adam's history in less awkward ways in future books. Parts are told from the points of view of some of his underlings. I liked Verity Everett a lot (although found that a really awkward name to be said out loud???), I think she'll go far. Then there's also Facebook and Twitter posts, which I could have lived without, but I did like how they often had correct information without knowing it.

I liked the book, but I will say that I found the drip feeding of information quite annoying in places. There were also unnecessary cliffhangers quite a lot which really frustrated me. But, I read this in a really short amount of time, enjoyed it, and will definitely look for more of this series in the future. I'm giving it four out of five.