Hope to Die

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My favourite feedback is when readers tell me it's like getting the raw material of the case, so they can be detectives themselves.

The characters were superbly drawn although, apart from the police and the odd other ones they were largely, eventually, unlikable.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. But, I did get a kick out of a character who had a major role in The Whole Truth, making a brief cameo in this one. in my paperback), there's a description of Fawley and Gis watching Gis's son throw bread to the ducks. They changed their name and moved to Oxford seventeen years ago after their daughter Camilla was convicted on circumstantial evidence of killing her baby.

Fawley finds himself interviewing Camilla in prison and she truly is just as slippery and unhelpful as reported in her original interviews. As I got further in the book I think I struggled with the format and the addition of newspaper articles, police interviews and similar information. I buddy read this with Pat, and Ceecee (because they couldn’t wait to read it either 😊), and all three of us enjoyed it. The murder leads Fawley to a convoluted investigation from the past, and a family torn apart by a devastating crime involving the disappearance of a child. If you’ve never read the series then don’t worry as the author has included an excellent summary at the beginning.

Cara Hunter has found a way to present her work in a way that comes close to offering the best of both worlds. The shooter and his wife claim self-defense, but when a connection is made to a decade's old case, DI Adam Fawley and his team are under immense pressure to discover the truth. The people involved also seem plausible – the police team are well-developed as separate characters (and there’s even a cast list with back-stories at the front of the book if you need a hand). What at first seems like an easy case of an intruder being shot by an elderly man in his home, turns into a complex and twisty case that has links to a high profile case of convicted child killer, Camilla Rowan.

Close to Home was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick and was shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2019. At times the story almost seemed over-complicated, although the case was satisfactorily solved in the end but there were still one or two issues that I felt were open to interpretation – which for me is a good thing. I don't give out many 5-star ratings for book reviews, but "Hope to Die" fully deserves that top mark. Under questioning, Richard Swann and his more evasive wife Margaret insist that the man was an intruder and they were defending their household, but the police believe the real story is much more complex than that. In fact I was so delighted, that I couldn’t wait another minute, and dropped everything to read it straightaway.The plot is complex and very clever, the pace rises and falls appropriately and it’s compelling and entertaining from the beginning to the end. They used to be Dick and Peggy Rowan and their daughter, Camilla, was convicted around 17 years ago of killing her baby 5 years before that when she was 17.

Overall, I’d recommend this to lovers of clever and immersive police procedurals – once you’ve met DI Fawley and his team, you’ll definitely want more.And yes, this is based on a true story, but since other creative liberties were taken, I think it would've been worth it to make the motive a bit clearer. An all round winner, and I have no hesitation in recommending this book, and the entire series, to mystery, crime, thriller, psychological suspense, domestic drama, and police procedural fans.