DI Fawley Series: Book 6
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Self-defense or murder? In the continuation of one of Britain’s most popular crime series from Cara Hunter—the author of the instant New York Times bestseller Murder in the Family—DI Fawley returns to determine if someone has staged a crime scene in connection with another homicide from years past.
Midnight. A grisly murder scene at isolated farm on the outskirts of Oxford.
A man lies dead in the kitchen—shot point blank. The farm’s elderly owners claim the shooting was self-defense against a burglar. But something about the crime scene doesn’t sit right with DI Adam Fawley, whose gut tells him there’s more to their story. If the victim came to rob the house, why wasn’t he wearing gloves or carrying tools? Why didn’t the owner of the house call the police right after the shooting? Why did his wife wash his blood splattered clothes immediately?
Digging deeper, the police realize this is no ordinary burglary gone wrong. There’s an unmistakable link to an infamous case from years earlier involving a child’s murder and an alleged miscarriage of justice. When the news leaks out, the press goes wild.
Suddenly Fawley’s team are under tremendous pressure to crack the case—and to bring one formidable criminal to justice.
When officers respond to an emergency call, they find a man rendered unidentifiable by a fatal gunshot and an elderly man who claims he shot an intruder.
On the surface, that might seem like an open-and-shut case. However, author Cara Hunter knows how to take a story to the next level by ramping up the psychological component.
Hope to Die is the newest installment in the DI Adam Farley thriller series. For those new to the series, the author gives a summary of the police characters, which she updates for both the old and new faces. The continuity of characters throughout the series is impressive because it allows readers to see how the characters have grown.
In what may be the most challenging case yet, Farley and his team discover the old couple involved in the shooting are tied to a 15-year-old trial. The events surrounding the trial are included as a backstory since they impact the current case. From court testimony to the Netflix documentary of the case, readers get plenty of information to mull over as they try to make connections between past and present.
In true investigative fashion, as one clue is found, more questions pop up. The new team members hit their stride with the rest of the unit as they navigate personal and professional challenges.
Hope to Die takes readers into a fascinating investigation where DNA evidence is leveraged to unravel a complex case with links to the past.