I love Cara Hunter’s police procedurals (featuring DI Adam Fawley) so I was thrilled to get my hands on ‘Murder in the Family’, Hunter’s first standalone novel.
Thanks to NetGalley for my review copy – opinions are entirely my own.
The story opens with the formation of a team of experts brought together by a TV show to reopen a cold case from 20 years previously – we see the CVs of the team and the narrative is told through transcripts of the programmes made, emails, phone records and newspaper articles. They’re asked to investigate the death of a young man – Luke Ryder – outside a family home in an exclusive part of London in 2003. The son of the family – and Luke’s stepson – wants to find out the truth about that fateful night and is determined that every lead will be followed for the pleasure of the viewing public…
It’s virtually impossible to say more about the plot without giving away the many twists and turns that the case takes. Suffice it to say, nothing is quite as it seems and the team have quite a task on their hands. It all makes for absolutely compelling reading – like the most sordid and tense soap opera ever. The reader takes on the role of the voyeuristic TV viewer devouring the show – while possibly also feeling a bit awkward about its intrusion into people’s lives. This is an idea that we’re becoming ever more familiar with in our world of social media, reality TV and docudramas – so brava to Hunter for capturing the zeitgeist here.
The format of the book – emails, transcripts, articles – is very clever. It may take a little while to adjust to, but it works brilliantly. The clues are all there…if you can spot them! Hunter also used a similar technique in her last DI Fawley novel with great results – so you’re in safe hands.
My main niggle was with the formatting of the ebook – I couldn’t adjust the font size of some of the texts, a couple were misaligned or blacked out and my Kindle doesn’t seem to display emojis. It wouldn’t stop me recommending the book wholeheartedly, but I’d suggest a print copy would be better. I don’t think I missed anything critical, but I did need laser eyesight at times!
This is an excellent addition to Hunter’s work – I literally have no clue how she manages to handle such fiendish plotting with the multi-format narrative approach! It’s clever, it’s totally addictive and it is a total winner for me.
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Header photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
