A Calculated Risk by Cari Hunter has a good storyline and plot with well-written characters. This is the first book I've read by Cari Hunter, and I enjoyed reading how she unfolded this mystery story and how she developed the characters and did not make them cookie-cutter caricatures and made the plot unique.

After 15 years, old lovers run into each other and each almost dies while working on a case together.
Detective Jo Shaw doesn't need complications, but the stabbing of a young woman brings plenty of those, and Jo will have to risk everything if she's going to make it through the case alive.

I would read more by this author.

#ACalculatedRisk #NetGalley

It’s fair to say that Cari Hunter doesn’t write formulaic novels. Her books are different. Characters are strong women with flaws; setting is beautiful, bleak and very British; plot is complex, fed out with virtuosity and always keeps you guessing. This story is no exception. I think it’s her best yet and that’s given I’m a big fan of Sanne and Meg.

The plot involves a crime ring in the north of England who are terrorising small business owners. But along the way DI Jo Shaw manages to injure herself several times and as well as flirting with her favourite nurse, she meets up with Isla Munro. Jo and Isla have major history but haven’t seen each other for 15 years.

The narrative always has you turning pages, needing to know, needing to understand and the descriptions of injury and the impact of those injuries shows Ms Hunter’s medical background. But nothing is gratuitous. This is real. If you’re injured, it hurts, and it has implications.

Tough, gritty, great writing and an excellent cast of characters. I’m hoping to hear more about Jo and her partner Tully - and, of course, Isla. Now I’m off to buy some mint imperials.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley

Everything I’ve come to love and expect from Cari Hunter. I wonderful police story with exceptionally well developed characters who you can’t help but love. Suspense, love, and a great setting!

5/5

Bleak, brilliant, very British: a near noir police procedural
The setting
With brilliant brushstrokes accomplished and accoladed author, Cari Hunter, paints at the outset the setting: post-Covid, post-Brexit, the area near Manchester is impoverished and emaciated, crime has skyrocketed, police are underfunded and overworked, same goes for the health service (NHS), the story is set in rainy and cold October – the canvas is bleak or in the unabashedly Northern English vernacular (sprinkled with the occasional Scottish) dreich. Take the cover as an indication of what is to come.

The characters
Bright lights on this bleak canvas are those people who are like beacon of hopes: police detective inspectors or short DIs (I love those British titles!) Jo/Jody and her partner Tully, hospital surgeon Isla and the nurse Dev, the courageous souls in the Pakistani community In all the struggles of a difficult and at times near hopeless investigation they try to do their best. The story emphasizes how important the comradeship and humon relations (and a lot of food and the peculiar British humor) are to carry on. We come to understand that this is how people survive in near impossible situations.

The writing
The story starts slowly. The reader gets a lot of local coloring: We encounter hands-on the daily work of the police in the Pakistani community and the gruelling service-hours of a surgeon. There is a lot of well-placed detail and the reader is from the very first sentences totally immersed into the police and medical setting (had to brush up on my medical knowledge though, but well worth it). Hunter does a brilliant job of controlling the pace which picks noticeable up in the last third and she pulls together all threads in a satisfying story arc and an ending which had me on the edge of my seat (or rather bed, wink). BTW I loved the cameos with Safi from Unbreakable.
I totally loved the Britishness which was not edited out to an inch of its life. Thank the Goddess for a rather big favor: the junk food is all Brit, the vernacular is totally (Northern) English with some Scottish. I love me a butty, bacon barm, blimey, bollocks, and salty language (ZON will block me if I go on).
The investigation at hand is done at the end, but the work to fight crime is not.

Fair warning: This is not a romance or romantice suspense. Jo and Isla who were together umpteen years ago at University start to become friends again, but the focus is very firmly on the ongoing investigation. And a trigger warning: graphic descriptions of injury and violence.

Thanks for the ARC via netgalley. The review is left voluntarily.

Everything you expect from Cari Hunter and more.
Murder, love and everything in between.
Really well written characters so i easily knew who was who.
Absolutely enjoyed every moment of A Calculated Risk.
Read in two sittings the only thing slowing me down was the medical terminology which i had to concentrate on.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.
An easy five stars from me.