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Hope to Die by Cara Hunter

Published by Penguin General UK, Viking

Publication Date: 18th August 2022

Adam Fawley #6

Genre: Crime, Mystery & Thrillers

My thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this title ahead of publication via NetGalley.

Book Description:

Midnight. A callout to an isolated farm outside Oxford. A body, shot at point blank range in the kitchen.

It looks like a burglary gone wrong, but DC Adam Fawley suspects there's something more to it. Who exactly was the aggressor here?

When the police discover a connection to a high-profile case from years ago, involving a child's murder and an alleged injustice, the press go wild.

Suddenly Fawley's team are under more scrutiny than ever before. And when you dig up the past, you're sure to find a few skeletons...

My Thoughts:

One of my favourite authors, Cara Hunter keeps up her reputation as the Queen of Contemporary Crime Writers with this new instalment in the DI Fawley series. 

Hope to Die is written in what has become recognisable as Cara's signature style, with copies of police interview transcripts and social media quotes dotted in among the narrative. These give the reader little insights into the background of the story, a feel for how the public are reacting to events as they are reported which gives a real-time feel to the book. There's a great resume of who's who and how they fit in at the start of the book so if you've picked up this without having read any other books in the series, you do get a great overview of the story so far.

Adam Fawley has recently become a dad again which if you have been following the series so far you will know is a significant event in his personal life. The events which kick off the book couldn't have come at a worse time for him; the shooting of an alleged intruder at an isolated farmhouse in the depth of the night seems fairly straightforward at first but when the team attend the scene there's definitely something "off" about the whole thing. The reports of what happened are not adding up and Fawley's instincts are telling him there's more to this than meets the eye.

Once the intruder is identified things get even trickier when it becomes clear that a previous police investigation by a neighbouring force has led to a terrible miscarriage of justice. The pressure is on to establish what went wrong in the original investigation - but why won't the wronged prisoner, who has spent much of their adult life behind bars, speak out and help solve the mystery?

Although I did work out "whodunit" quite early in the book (hence the deduction to a 4 star read), the journey of explaining how things went so horribly wrong for everyone involved was so intricately plotted that I was fully invested in the characters and how things would pan out for them all.

Roll on book 7!

About the Author:

Cara Hunter is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling crime novels Close to Home, In the Dark, No Way Out, All the Rage and The Whole Truth all featuring DI Adam Fawley and his Oxford-based police team. 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. No Way Out was selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 best crime novels since 1945. And The Whole Truth was a Richard and Judy pick in 2021. Cara's novels have sold more than a million copies worldwide, and the TV rights to the series have now been acquired by the Fremantle group. She lives in Oxford, on a street not unlike those featured in her books.