Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter was published by HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction on 20 July 2023.
IT WAS A CASE THAT GRIPPED THE NATION
LUKE RYDER’S MURDER HAS NEVER BEEN SOLVED
In December 2003, Luke Ryder was found dead in the garden of the family home in London, leaving behind a wealthy older widow and three stepchildren. Nobody saw anything.
Now, secrets will be revealed – live on camera.
Years later a group of experts re-examine the evidence on Infamous, a true-crime show – with shocking results. Does the team know more than they’ve been letting on?
Or does the truth lie closer to home?
Can you solve the case before they do? The truth will blow your mind.
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Having read and loved all of Cara Hunter‘s Adam Fawley books, I was intrigued to see that she had written a standalone story, and even more so to see the format was that of a True Crime TV documentary playing out in real time. In some ways it is a natural step on from the Fawley books, which already intersperse their prose with interview transcripts, emails and tweets. Murder in the Family takes it further by including newspaper headlines and articles, TV reviews, text messages and voicemails as well as the documentary transcripts to showcase the story and the evidence.
It’s cleverly written and the format and compelling text made it easy to picture the story coming to life and like in a real documentary, each episode ends on a cliffhanger and you find yourself thinking ‘Just one more episode, just one more chapter!’ Each episode brings more evidence to light resulting in more twists to the tale – but is it actually taking the cast any closer to the solution.
Like in her earlier books, Cara Hunter manages to get in some humorous lines which balanced out some of the darker moments, and I also loved the nod to the forthcoming TV adaptation of her own Close to Home and the mentions of other real life contemporary crime writers.
Murder in the Family was a really exciting and enjoyable journey to have been taken on and I look forward very much to whatever Cara Hunter writes next.
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