Originally published: 18 Aug 2022

Author: Cara Hunter

Published by: Viking Books

Genre: Crime Thriller

Length: 432 pages

Reading dates: 2-5 September 2022

Midnight.

A call out to an isolated farm on the outskirts of Oxford.

A body shot at point-blank range in the kitchen.

It looks like a burglary gone wrong, but DI Adam Fawley suspects there’s something more to it.

When the police discover a connection to a high-profile case from years ago, involving a child’s murder and an alleged miscarriage of justice, 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…

Hope to Die is the 6th book in the DI Adam Fawley series and I’m thrilled to be wrapping up the blog tour. I came late to this series, starting with All the Rage in 2020 and The Whole Truth in 2021  These books can be read as standalones so you don’t have to have read the previous instalments (although of course, it’s always best if you can). Hope to Die has a useful guide at the beginning to all the major characters and their backstories.

When the police are called to a remote Oxfordshire house in the middle of the night after reports of a disturbance, they certainly don’t expect to find an elderly couple with a dead man in the kitchen. The victim is unidentifiable due to the fact that he has been shot at point-blank range and the Swann’s insist he had broken in and was trying to rob them. It isn’t long before the Fawley’s team are suspicious of this story and when they manage to identify the dead man through DNA testing they realise there is a link to a crime involving a child’s murder from many years ago.

What I love about this series of crime thrillers is returning to characters we know – there isn’t a lot of character back story (apart for Adam Fowley) but Hunter gives enough to make you invested in their lives. She is also very good at telling the story using different formats including interview transcripts, podcasts, interviews, newspapers articles and letters and I really like these different formats. Just a small gripe is the size of the font in some of the formats – it was almost unreadable for me, despite new reading glasses and it was a shame. This by no means reflects of my feelings of the book though!

Just when I thought the case is resolved, more and more revelations left my head spinning. Hope to Die is a well plotted, thrilling read that I thoroughly enjoyed, I can’t wait for the next instalment!

Thank you so much to Lou from Penguin Viking for inviting me on the tour and for sending me a finished copy of the book. Don’t forget to check out these other awesome bloggers.

About the author:

Cara Hunter is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling crime novels Close to Home, In the Dark and No Way Out, all featuring DI Adam Fawley and his Oxford-based police team. Close to Home was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick, was shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2019 and No Way Out was selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 best crime novels since 1945. Cara’s novels have sold more than three quarters of a million copies worldwide. Cara Hunter lives in Oxford, on a street not unlike those featured in her books.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CaraHunterBooks