All the Rage (D I Fawley) by Cara Hunter
| All the Rage (D I Fawley) by Cara Hunter | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: DI Adam Fawley and his team are faced with what could be a hate crime, but the victim doesn't want the matter pursued. Then another girl goes missing. An intricate, twisty plot with great characters. Highly recommended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 464 | Date: January 2020 |
| Publisher: Penguin | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0241985113 | |
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A very beautiful, but extremely distressed teenage girl was picked up by a minicab driver on the outskirts of Oxford. She didn't want to go to the police station or the hospital: she just wanted to be taken home. The driver wasn't so certain though - and after dropping the girl at home he went to the police, which is why DI Adam Fawley found himself talking to Faith Appleford and her mother. Both were adamant that this was nothing more than an April Fool's joke which had gone wrong. No crime had been committed and Faith didn't want to take the matter any further. Fawley and his team weren't prepared to leave it at that and they began investigating. What they found strange was that Faith Appleford didn't seem to have much of a history.
It might have been treated as a joke gone wrong but Fawley and his team discovered some information which led them to believe that the attack on Faith might have been a hate crime. Then, a few days later, another girl - also beautiful, of about the same age and living just a few streets away from Faith went missing. The first girl had come back - would Sasha Blake be as lucky?
Faith was something of a loner - new to the area she hadn't yet made any real friends - but Sasha was part of a close-knit group. Leah, Isabel, Patsie and Sasha were known as the LIPS and they didn't welcome outsiders into the group. The loss of one of their number could only be a tremendous shock, but they have a suspicion that the art teacher at school has been stalking Sasha and despite their mother's assertions to the contrary they suspect that Sasha had a boyfriend.
I first encountered Adam Fawley and his creator, Cara Hunter, when I read No Way Out. I liked that this was Oxford, but not the Oxford of Morse. It's the city where non-academics live and work and whilst it might not be quite so photogenic the location does give a feeling of reality. I felt too that Hunter tackled some sensitive issues with sympathy and understanding and she does the same in All the Rage. I'm not going to tell you what those issues are: you really should discover them in the way that Hunter intends, but it is a very topical point and the approach is though-provoking.
The characterisation is excellent. I'm frequently surprised by how few detectives there are in most police procedurals, but Hunter has six members in Fawley's team and they all came off the page surprisingly well as individuals. I found that I was invested in their lives as well as those of the general public, but somehow they never took over the story: that's skilled writing. The plot is well done, too. I had no idea who was responsible for what happened and simply settled in for an enjoyable read. The denouement is good, but I have to warn you that there is something of a cliffhanger at the end and the wait for the next book in the series is going to seem like a long one! I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.
We've also been impressed by The Lying Room by Nicci French.
Cara Hunter's DI Adam Fawley Books in Chronological Order
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