Cara Hunter: Close to Home, Penguin Viking UK, 9780241283097, paperback, pub date 14. December 2017

Cara Hunter: Sie finden dich nie, Aufbau Verlag, 9783746633589, 17. August 2018

One nightmare of anyone with children is that your child goes missing. This is how this debut crime mystery of Cara Hunter begins; Daisy Mason disappears during a costume party her family is throwing for their neighbors and children under everyone’s watchful eyes. 

Oxford Detective Inspector Adam Fawley and his team are assigned to the case and soon realize that something is utterly wrong with the Mason family.  A mother who is more concerned with her appearance then with what happend to her lost 8 year old, a very disturbed brother Leo and Barry, the father who is falling apart faster than his wife. As DI Fawley starts scratching at the surface of Daisy’s family, more questions popp up than answers.  Is it possible someone in her own family had a motive?

 

Despite Cara Hunter keeping a fast pace flowing between various suspects depending on new findings by the police, I would only give this debut a four star rating.  I was never bored but felt the novel was more of a kind that had been told before.  Perhaps the publisher intended to feed the appetite of readers of this genre with a new author. The ending is good but not totally unexpected as the author did not leave too many possibilities by the time the last chapter arrived.