There has been a brutal attack on a girl in Oxford. She was fortunate that the attacker was scared off by a passing police car, but the victim was viciously assaulted.
DI Adam Fawley is on the case, with the victim not keen to really come forward for reasons which become clearer later.
In the meantime, there’s another schoolgirl has disappeared, and this seems to be a pattern. What’s more, the attacks seem similar to a solved case from Fawley’s past.
This was the first Cara Hunter novel I’d read, and despite being the fourth in the series, can easily be read as a standalone or as an introduction to the series. Hunter has created a believable murder investigations team in a very authentic feeling contemporary Oxford.
The “USP” is the inclusion of various screengrabs of emails, text messages and Instagram posts amongst over things to increase the verisimilitude of the book. It also, unusually, flips between first person and third person. We get Fawley from his perspective, but then we’ll jump to someone else in the team, and get the story delivered from their point of view.
The book is a page turner, with the case moving apace, and the usual pressures from above and media interest in such a case being well represented. (Although I’d like to think that the broadcast media would behave slightly better than they do in this book!)
A thoroughly enjoyable read from a new author to me.
Thanks to Penguin Books (UK) and Netgalley for the ARC. All the Rage is out in paperback on 23 January 2020, and on Kindle on 19 December 2019.