Hope to Die

This is the sixth in Cara Hunter’s Oxford based crime thrillers featuring DI Adam Fawley and this time Hunter turns away from the domestic worries of her regular cast and sticks firmly to the mystery in hand. And for all those lovers of true-life crime then this had a corking storyline. The same list of characters still appear, with one or two interesting additions to the investigative team. Their back stories are kept ticking over so that there is a promise of developments to come, but here, the case of a woman dubbed Milly Liar and what happened to her new-born son takes centre stage.

The story begins with a 999 caller reporting possible gunshots at an isolated Oxfordshire farmhouse. At first it seems that a burglar has had his head blown off by the elderly man who disturbed him, but when DI Adam Fawley and his team get involved, it soon becomes clear that this case might not be as cut and dried as it first appeared. Some aspects of the old man's account do not ring true and his wife is openly hostile. And when the couple are found to have a connection to a high profile murder trial 20 years ago everything becomes very complicated.

Hope to Die is very clever story telling. Cara Hunter weaves in several themes, each with a nod to real-life cases: a notorious and non-communicative central female character (convicted of infanticide and reviled as a child-killer); a possible miscarriage of justice; a remote farmhouse where an elderly couple with a shotgun confront a so-called burglar, an investigative journalist called John Penrose and a four part Netflix exposure. This is a rich and heady brew! And just when I thought I had a fix on the unfolding events Hunter threw another hand grenade into the mix and I had to think again.

I enjoyed getting to know DI Fawley and his team again and I also enjoyed trying to solve the puzzle over the very unsympathetic character of Camilla Rowan – Milly Liar –  and what really happened to her missing baby boy. 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.  

Cara Hunter has recently adopted a practice that I thoroughly approve in crime novels, that of including a dramatis personae at the beginning. I hope this continues and I’m eagerly awaiting the next book the series.