Mega-bestselling British crime novelist Cara Hunter makes her big American debut with a shocking thriller about a cold case, a fictional true crime series, and the family caught in the middle.
SIX EPISODES. ONE KILLER.
It was a case that gripped the nation. In December 2003, Luke Ryder, the stepfather of acclaimed filmmaker Guy Howard (then aged 10), was found dead in the garden of their suburban family home.
Luke Ryder’s murder has never been solved. Guy Howard’s mother and two half-sisters were in the house at the time of the murder–but all swear they saw nothing. Despite a high-profile police investigation and endless media attention, no suspect was ever charged.
But some murder cases are simply too big to forget…
Now comes the sensational new Netflix series Infamous, dedicated to investigating–and perhaps cracking–this famous cold case. The production team will re-examine testimony, re-interview witnesses, and once again scour the evidence. The family will speak. The key players will be reunited–on camera. The truth will come out.
Book Information: Print Length: 480 pages. Publisher: HarperCollins. Publication Date: 6 July 2023
Cara Hunter is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling crime novels Close to Home, In the Dark, No Way Out, All the Rage and The Whole Truth all featuring DI Adam Fawley and his Oxford-based police team. Close to Home was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick and was shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2019. No Way Out was selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 best crime novels since 1945. And The Whole Truth was a Richard and Judy pick in 2021. Cara’s novels have sold more than a million copies worldwide, and the TV rights to the series have now been acquired by the Fremantle group. She lives in Oxford, on a street not unlike those featured in her books.
My Review:
I absolutely adore Cara’s series featuring DI Adam Fawley and I was super excited to see she has a new standalone crime thriller being published in July 2023.
Once again Cara has written a clever and gripping thriller and this time she uses Netflix to tell her story. Set within a true crime series documentary over six episodes a cold case is reinvestigated with the aid of some of the key players in the original case and some new experts in the fields of Crime Scene Investigation and Forensic Psychology.
Luke Ryder was killed in 2003 and his murder has remained a mystery until twenty years later when his stepson Guy Howard, now a british film maker decides to revisit the murder and try to uncover the truth as a 6 part Docu-Drama with Netflix.
Once again, Cara Hunter uses the press to pop little nuggets of information amongst the chapters using newspaper articles of a TV critic analysing each episode and emails between family members and the film directors.
The story is told through each Netflix episode and reads exactly like a transcript which can take a little longer to get use to but there is a very helpful guide at the beginning of the book telling you who the main characters are.
Throughout the book we find out more about Luke Ryder and who he was and each episode leaves the readers with a cliff hanger of an ending turning everything you think you worked out upside down.
If you enjoy the DI Adam Fawley series (and if you haven’t I can’t recommend them enough), then you will thoroughly enjoy Murder In The Family.
