Twenty years ago there was an horrific murder at the beautiful home of a London socialite. Luke Ryder was Caroline Howard’s second husband, with them having been married for just over one year, and, according to all reports, very much in love. Much younger than Caroline, Luke, an Australian, met a very brutal end, with his face and head entirely obliterated. For two decades the police have been unable to find the perpetrator. Now Infamous, a true crime show presented by Netflix, is taking up the mantle. With Guy Howard, Caroline’s only son as director, and six well known professionals on the panel, it is hoped that the mystery is on its way to be solved.

This is the first Cara Hunter book I have read and I was very impressed. Fast paced, and gripping, the writing was very good. Ingenious presentation, the book reads as a production of a true crime cold case tv series. It is well thought out, with great characters.

The arc I received was not the best, at times very difficult to follow, but even so I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading the published book, when all the gremlins and glitches have been edited out.

Thank you NetGalley.

A very enjoyable and gripping novel written in the style of a television documentary script including newspaper clippings, text messages and other background material.
Cleverly written, it unravels a tightly knit 20 year old unsolved murder with the help of a team of ‘experts’ who may or may not be involved in the case.
An exciting and unusual read, a little reminiscent of Poirot summing up one of his famous cases.

The first standalone novel by the author of the DI Fawley Oxford-set series, this is an intriguing thriller set in the world of true crime documentary investigations and written in Cara Hunter's trademark style of narrative, newspaper columns, talkboards, social media and dialogue.
Twenty years ago a young man was murdered in the grounds of his lavish London home. The younger second husband of a woman who was herself a younger second wife who inherited a life interest in the house, set in extensive gardens in a expensive part of London, Luke was found beaten to death on a rainy night in 2003. No one was ever charged with his murder although many people believe his wife was to blame. Now twenty years later her son, Guy, just a child at the time of the murder, wants answers, directing a documentary series that aims to reinvestigate every thread to find out once and for all who was responsible, bringing together a team of experts to do so.
The book follows the timeline of the documentary, bookending each episode with reviews, conversations, online discussions and messaging. It makes for fast paced, visual reading. We discover along with the viewer. There's no POV or deep dive into emotions and thought, revelations are known to us at the same moment as they would have been unveiled to the fictional viewer and the documentary team. And there are plenty of revelations because no one is quite as impartial as they claim and there is a lot to uncover about that night, Guy's family and the victim himself.
Twisty, inventive and breathless this is highly recommended.

I have never read any of Cara Hunter's celebrated police procedurals, but this stand-alone thriller is well worth reading. The writer delivers a number of unexpected developments over the course of the book, and some of them will leave you reeling.

Two decades ago, Luke Ryder was a young Australian man married to a much older woman with three children - a little boy and two teenage girls. He was living in a beautiful home located in a highly desirable London postcode, when he met a sudden death, under decidedly mysterious circumstances.

Now his unsolved murder is being featured in a new Netflix true crime documentary series titled Infamous, made by none other than Luke's one-time stepson, Guy Howard. To make things even more interesting, the reinvestigation into the case features a panel of experts going through all the available evidence (including some new findings) with the aim of achieving closure for Luke and his family.

Luke's wife Caroline is now in the early stages of dementia, and her children are not all equally comfortable about revisiting those traumatic events. Since Luke's dead body was found by one his teenage stepdaughters, upon returning from a party, that is hardly surprising!

Only Luke and his young stepson Guy were home when the murder took place, as his wife and stepdaughters were out attending separate social events that night. So there appear to be no witnesses to the murder.

At the time, there was plenty of speculation that Luke was in fact a gold-digger, since he was introduced to his wife as a friend of her stepson (from her husband's first marriage). Hence there are some interesting family dynamics to be examined here, alongside the police force's insistence that this may have been a drug deal gone wrong.

The book did a brilliant job of holding the reader's attention, taking us along on an unpredictable journey. The story telling device using the panel of experts examining various materials - including personal interviews, text messages, newspaper headlines and police reports - took a little time to absorb, but proved very effective in the end.

This is an absorbing mystery, offering plenty of surprises, and it was a well-paced and enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

(I have posted this review to Goodreads already and will be sharing it on social media in the coming week)

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.
Another fantastic book by Cara Hunter. I absolutely love her style of writing it is so up to date and in the moment. It is a fast paced book written in a very different style with a totally unusual take on a historic case. It bought up loads of questions and so many twists and turns at times I had to go back and re read bits.
The ending is a total surprise. Well done Cara look forward to your next book.

This gripping book tells the story of a 20 year old murder through the medium of a true crime tv programme. As the book progresses, more details emerge, including those of the people investigating. It did keep me guessing till the end.

In December 2003, Luke Ryder was found dead in the garden of the family home in London, leaving behind a wealthy older widow and three stepchildren. Nobody saw anything.

Now, secrets will be revealed – live on camera.

Years later a group of experts re-examine the evidence on Infamous, a true-crime show – with shocking results. Does the team know more than they’ve been letting on?

Or does the truth lie closer to home?

Gripping book, that had me on the edge of my seat until the very last page

Firstly I would like to thank Harper Collins UK and the author Cara Hunter for access to murder in the family.

The review I am going to make is an honest review regardless of the access I received for this book. It should be noted I was not paid for this review and ensure honesty in all my reviews.

Luke was found dead in his garden in London and nobody saw what happened – not his wife or their three step children. A true crime show reviews this case on television years later and find shocking results.

This book gripped me from the beginning and had a very ‘who done it’ vibe. However the ending slightly let me down hence the four star review.

I saw that this book was described as 'Agatha Christie meets Cluedo' both things that excite me enormously, but it had a strong whiff of 'An Inspector Calls' about it as well.

It was gripping once I was able to sit down and concentrate on it properly.

I thought the dual plots of Luke as a character and the whodunit and then the group dynamic as well worked very well and kept the pacing up.

Some of the elements didn't work that well as an ebook, I wanted to be able to flick back and forth to look back at bits of evidence and characters etc, and some bits were quite small. But that is a minor usage comment. The plot was very enjoyable and unique.

After sleeping on it. The texts between the sisters took away some of the tension for me because I was always expecting it to circle back to them so I didn't ever buy intonany of the group's motives properly. Either needed more texts from others adding so they don't stand out, for the texts to be less obviously suspicious or for them to have been removed.

Totally unexpected mystery, very well written & page turner.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

I have loved Cara hunter’s previous books so was very excited to get to read this one before publication. It was an interesting book but I found it quite hard work to follow , getting confused by the various characters and what was happening. I was disappointed

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to review this book by Cara Hunter. I have enjoyed other books by this author jn the past so had high expectations for this one. Initially the new format threw me, the investigation of an unsolved murder 20 years later was covered as a television series. Although I very much enjoyed this book it took longer to really get into the story than usual. There were far to many characters, playing important roles with the story. Throughout the TV series many twists were thrown in by these characters. Many of whom were not as I perceived from their cv's at the beginning.
A good storyline, but the ending was unsatisfactory for me. I can however recommend this book to lovers of crime fiction.

Such an exciting and innovative new format. You feel like you are part of thr investigation. I think this was such a great idea and it was really immersive.

The ending wasn't for me but the rest of the book is fabulous.

This book had a really interesting format. The story was regarding a murder in the Howard family 20 years ago of their stepfather Luke Ryder. 20 years later a team comes together to make a true crime netflix type TV programme to help solve the murder. The story is told through text messages, newspaper articles etc. I felt this worked well and added to the authenticity of the story, though it made it a little difficult to read on a kindle. There are plenty of secrets and twists and turns. No-one is how they seem.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Luke Ryder was killed in 2003 and his murderer never found. Now a TV show has taken the opportunity to put together a team to solve the case.
An original and unusual stand alone novel from the brilliant mind of Cara Hunter. Full of surprisingly sudden twists, this book is written in such a unique style, it’s as if you are part of a true crime investigation.
Thanks to NetGallery and the publisher for giving me the chance to read this ARC in return for an honest review.

I just couldn’t get on with this book. I think the author has found a really ingenious way of presenting a story but I only made it about 10% of the way through, I kept waiting for the script style writing to stop and the actual story to start until I finally realised that this would be the format of the book. This style of writing just wasn’t for me, I found it hard to engage with the characters and it just fell rather flat. It reads very well as a script and the whole time I was thinking this would make a great documentary, it just didn’t make for a great book for me or at least the parts that I read.

Have always loved caras books and although this was a stand alone book and didn't include DI Fawley and the team it didn't disappoint.

Luke Ryder is an unsolved murder from 20 years ago. Step father to Guy, who was 10 at the time, Guy is desperate to understand the truth and be able to offer closure to the family.
He approaches Nick, a documentary producer and between them they set up a documentary to relook at the case. A panel of experts are invited to take part in this and include English and American police officers, a psychologist and journalist.

However nothing or nobody is as they seem and twist after twist is uncovered as the case unfolds.

A brilliant read, highly recommend.

Rating: 4.2/5

Already being a huge admirer of Cara Hunter's DI Adam Fawley series, I was always going to jump at the chance to read a new standalone mystery from that same author. There are certain traits that will be familiar to those already acquainted with the Fawley books, but there are also certain aspects that are handled quite differently and display an element of experimentation and boundary testing on the part of the writer, which may not necessarily go down well with all readers.

I won't rehash the plot here - there is already ample information in the accompanying marketing blurb and other early reviews. Suffice to say that Cara Hunter takes the traditional police procedural format and combines it with the real life crime genre. That, in itself, is nothing new - the sixth (and at time of writing, most recent) Adam Fawley novel, "Hope to Die" also utilised elements from each of these genres. The difference here is that it is presented as a televised cold case investigation on Netflix.

I have commented elsewhere that police procedurals are perhaps the one area of written fiction that actually tend to work better as televisual adaptations. Cara Hunter's previous books have incorporated literary / publishing mechanics that embellish and enhance the overall impact of the written word and create something close to "the best of both worlds". In "Murder in the Family" the author takes that approach further than she has previously and, as a result, this latest novel often has a feel that is far more akin to the style of Janice Hallett's books.

For the most part, the narrative is presented in the form of a screenplay, with the inclusion of additional sections from media such as mobile phone text messages and email. There is quite a cast of characters, which could be potentially daunting, but Cara Hunter again uses a technique already deployed in the Fawley series, by providing a little background précis of the key players at the start of the book. As ever, the characterisation is entirely credible with each protagonist being given a distinct persona. However, the format does prevent the author being able to create the same depth of character that she usually manages to achieve. The style of the narrative and the level of detail also mean that it is not always the easiest to follow, especially in the earlier stages while you are becoming accustomed to the format.

The mystery itself is as clever and tightly plotted as you might expect from the pen of Cara Hunter and there are certainly plenty of unexpected, but perfectly legitimate, plot developments that will keep you on your toes and catch you unawares. The pacing of a novel is usually another one of this author's strong suits, but that does feel a touch constrained by the format in this particular novel. That said, there is ample intrigue as the mystery develops to ensure no loss of interest on the part of the reader.

Overall, this is another highly appealing mystery from Cara Hunter. Once again, she challenges conventional crime writing formats and the expectations of the reader, but with success - although it does occasionally compromise some of the author's strengths.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

Intriguing premise and original layout for a book. The story about a cold case being solved by experts and the family involved was well done. However I did on my Kindle have problems with the ;layout. Some of it was far too small to read and could not be enlarged. Some text was greyed out and very difficult to read. The novel needed to make up its mind whether it was going to use UK spellings or American. Given its sup[posed to be the Met investigating I feel the book should use UK spellings. Some errors in the text too. Shame

I started reading this book and was immediately hooked.
A book posing as a script posing as a book, genius!

The story is laid out in a very clever way that keeps the reader hooked and and eager to see what the next ‘episode’ will hold.
Ultimately I loved this book but I have to admit to not completely loving the ending. In a book full of possible conclusions I can’t help but feel the one chosen was perhaps a little too easy and a bit of an easy way out. I found myself looking to see where the next page was and yet it had actually ended.