Hope to Die

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Like most of the books in this series the storyline is very tense and there is an eagerness to get to the end to find the perpetrator.

As the police investigate we discover the Swann's are indeed hiding a secret from their past and are not the bland couple they appear to be. The characters were superbly drawn although, apart from the police and the odd other ones they were largely, eventually, unlikable. As we should all be aware by now, feeding ducks bread is bad because the food has little nutritional value and can harm ducklings' growth, pollute waterways and attract rodents and other pests. The only comment on this is that these inserts are in very tiny font and are a bit challenging on the Kindle – I couldn’t get them to enlarge. We are introduced to some new characters in this installment and I really liked seeing how they fit into the dynamics of Fawley’s team.

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. When the police arrive and knock at the door,at first no one answers then the door is opened by pensioner Richard. This is quite hard for me to review as this is my first Cara Hunter book and at the time of joining the blog tour I wasn’t aware this was book six of a series 😫 and only realised this once I started reading it and put it on goodreads as currently reading so I do think that sadly took away some of the reading experience as I felt like I had missed out on things from previous books. 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. The most effective one here by a mile is the transcripts from the Netflix documentary, which are super authentic and leave you hungry for more information.

They changed their name and moved to Oxford seventeen years ago after their daughter Camilla was convicted on circumstantial evidence of killing her baby. As a result, it leaves you with lots of competing theories and fuels doubt as to what really happened, both in terms of Camilla’s apparent guilt and how much her parents really knew. This is a good story for Fawley, who comes across as having a new lease of life and it was fun getting an insight into his thoughts on this particular case and giving an interview about it, as well as the dynamic between the members of his team.Three new characters joined Adam’s team, and they were all great additions, even if they weren’t all particularly likeable. The sub-plot about Somer is quite sad, but the three new additions to the team are all great and it does not take long to get to know them. The Swanns prove to be a shifty pair especially aggressive Peggy and her brand of motherhood contrasts sharply with that of Alex. 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.

Written like others in the series, with lots of police interviews and TV scripts amongst other formats making up the bulk of the text. I must say though the Keli Lane case aspects, which the author was inspired by, was just a bit too repetitive if you've watched docos or read up on it.

The acknowledgements in the book does indicate that part of the story is based on the Australian case of Keli Lane which you may want to look up for more background.