I can’t praise Cara Hunter’s sixth DI Adam Fawley crime novel enough. Hope to Die is everything a police procedural should be, with a solid team of police officers, a thoughtful lead, and a complex case that contains twists even up until the last chapter. The bestselling series is a smash in England, and the production rights have been purchased for TV. Fans of Ann Cleeves’ Vera series should hope this series makes it to BBC, BritBox or Acorn.

If a man hadn’t reported the gunshot at Gantry Manor outside Oxford, a young man’s death might never have been discovered. When the local police find the man’s body with his face shot away, and no identification, the elderly Swanns tell a strange story of a burglary gone wrong. But, the details just don’t add up for DI Fawley and his team. Why did the Swanns never call the police? How did Richard Swann get the shotgun from the cellar in time to shoot the victim? There were so many inconsistencies.

Then Fawley and team members recognize the Swanns, and link them to a notorious case that made headlines all over the country fifteen years earlier, and inspired a Netflix series. When Camilla Rowan was seventeen, she gave birth to a baby boy, and walked out of the hospital with him two hours later. The baby was never seen again, but five years afterwards, a social worker asked questions. What happened to that baby? Five years after his disappearance, Camilla, “Milly Liar”, was tried and convicted of killing her child. She’s now been in prison for fifteen years. She continues to protest her innocence, saying she gave the baby to its father, but the previous nationwide search turned up nothing. Now, Fawley and his team have to dig into the past again to investigate that disappearance, wondering how it connects to the death at Gantry Manor.

As I said, Hope to Die is a well-written, complex police procedural with the investigation laid out carefully. There are a few spoilers for the previous book in the series, The Whole Truth, but if you start at the beginning of the series, that might not matter. Hunter provides an added feature, a summary of the police officers in the book, with their character traits, marriage status, and status on the team. It’s so helpful! This is one of my favorite books of the year so far.

Hope to Die is inspired by a true case in Australia. Hunter’s use of mixed media, including TV scripts, DNA summaries, and texts between police departments makes the police procedural relevant today.

Cara Hunter’s website is https://cara-hunter.com/

Hope to Die by Cara Hunter. William Morrow, 2024. ISBN 9780063263819 (paperback), 432p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley from the publisher after I agreed to review the book, with no promise of a positive review.

Something I’ve not done before, but these books should be read in order. Here’s the list of Cara Hunter’s DI Fawley crime novels.

Close to Home

In the Dark

No Way Out

All the Rage

The Whole Truth

Hope to Die