GEOFFREY WANSELL
HOPE TO DIE by Cara Hunter (Penguin £8.99, 432 pp)
DeTeCTIve Inspector Adam Fawley works in Oxford — stamping ground of the legendary morse — and he is every bit as compelling. This, his sixth appearance, confirms just how interesting and considerable a character he has become. A young man is shot dead with a shotgun in the isolated house of an elderly couple on the city outskirts.
so far so obvious. But Fawley rapidly realises that this is not the burglary-gonewrong that it may appear. Indeed it emerges that it is much more complex.
It turns out that the intruder is the child of Camilla Rowan, the notorious ‘Chameleon Girl’, who is still serving life for the murder of her newborn son. The baby’s body was never found and Rowan has long claimed that she never harmed him. so begins a gripping police procedural, with layer upon layer of twists and turns that force the reader to turn the pages at an ever increasing rate. If you have not sampled Adam Fawley before, now is certainly the time.
BETTER THE BLOOD by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster £14.99, 336 pp)
THIs debut from a New Zealandborn, award-winning screenwriter and director introduces the formidable maori detective Hana Westerman, who is struggling both to bring up a rebellious teenage daughter and remain a senior member of the Central Investigation Branch in Auckland.
Hana discovers a body hanged in a secret room at a crime scene. This may just be the first murder of what could become New Zealand’s first serial killer, one determined to avenge the wrongs done to the maori nation by the colonial invaders. This brings Hana’s ancestry into question and asks where her true loyalties lie.
packed with intricate detail about maori history and culture, this tense and involving story ushers in a remarkable new detective, of whom we shall hear more.
QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT by Karen Rose (Headline £20, 608 pp)
seT in the French Quarter of New Orleans in the years after Hurricane Katrina all but destroyed the city, the perennial bestseller Rose here introduces a quirky new character — former marine, now turned private detective, molly sutton.
Fierce and highly motivated, she is no stranger to tragedy; her father was murdered, and so she quickly sympathises with a talented young chef in New Orleans who wants her agency to investigate his former policeman father Rocky’s apparent suicide. The chef is convinced he too was murdered.
It gradually emerges that his father was working on a private investigation into corruption in the city’s police department that spreads all the way to the most senior ranks and could also involve local politicians.
Add to the mix a young man who may have witnessed a murder, as well as the tenacity of sutton, and you have the ingredients to create a riveting story.