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On the 20th anniversary of his stepfather's murder, movie director Guy Howard assembles a team to put together a Netflix mini-series with the intention of solving the murder once and for all. The team of investigators, an ex-cop, a journalist and a psychologist are given carte blanche to leave no stone unturned, hoping that the improvements in investigative techniques and tools over the years will allow them to explore evidence that eluded the cops in 2003. And from the first episode, that hunch has proved correct. Spoiler alert: the murder is solved in the final episode, but I suspect you already assumed that.
The format of the book is brilliant. Instead of a standard narrative, Hunter writes the story as a transcript of the script and other documentation of the series. Each chapter contains the script of one episode, along with visuals such as maps, photos, media reviews of the series, text messages, and even the weekly comments from an online chat group. It makes the story move along quickly and gives us an array of information that would be impossible to convey in any other format. Each episode ends with a revelation and cliffhanger, which doesn't feel contrived since there are twists and turns everywhere you look in this story. I particularly loved the film critic's reviews and fan chats which appear at the end of each episode, as they at times express annoyance at the goings-on even as they are glued to the series. It very much reads like Netflix's recent popular true crime series "Making a Murderer" and "The Staircase."
Along the way, this also becomes much more than a murder mystery. As the film critic titles one of his reviews, it is also a bit of "The Real Housewives of W8" (W8 being a posh neighborhood in London). We learn that very few characters in the story are telling the whole truth, and the truth is a maze of intrigue, adultery, mistaken identity and betrayal among the upper classes with the children (who were 10 and 13 at the time of the murder) caught in the middle. But are they telling the whole truth either? Read on to find out.
I found this book a quick and very enjoyable read, in part because the story is intriguing, and in part because the format makes it feel immediate and contemporary. The reader feels a bit like an insider, seeing the call sheets, media releases, and script details that would normally not be available to someone watching on TV. The genius of it all is that nobody knows how it's going to go, not even the director and the investigators.
Cara Hunter is a mega-bestselling author in the UK, and this is her American debut. It's a standalone novel, although she's most famous for her series featuring a crime investigator working in Oxford. It's a stunning debut, one that will win her many American fans. I know it did me.
§ Ellen Rosewall is Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she taught and directed the Arts Management program for over 20 years. She is the author of both scholarly works and fiction. As an artist, her works have been exhibited at galleries throughout the Midwest. She is an avid reader and is proud of her extensive collectionof signed books.
Reviewed by Ellen Rosewall, September 2023
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