DI Adam Fawley #5
This popular UK series is being released in chunks stateside. With the release of The Whole Truth, books 3 through 5 are now available. If the rest of them are anything like this one, sign me up – if Harlan Coben wrote a police series it might be something like this insanely readable and provoking book. Hunter, in golden age style, provides a precis of the characters at the beginning to aid the reader coming late to the series in getting up to speed. It remained a helpful reference as I sorted characters mentally.
The book has a fascinating premise. The case that opens the narrative involves a call from a swanky, formerly all-women’s college at the edge of Oxford, and it’s to be handled with kid gloves, so despite the fact that DI Fawley is at home with his very pregnant wife, he is the one who heads out along with his team. He is the one who ends up talking alone to the high up college admin, and he’s the one who discovers that the accused is a young, flashy female professor who teaches AI, and the victim, one of her male grad students.
The young man goes through the whole rape examination just as a woman would, complete with photographs, swabs and intrusive questions, though the women handling him could not be kinder. You are forced to adjust your preconceptions as you follow this case. The professor in question does indeed seem incredibly entitled. There are some physical clues that point to an assault as well as some physical clues in other forms throughout the house. The detectives have enough questions to make it a thorough investigation.
The home lives of the detectives play a part in the story as well, and the home life of Fawley powers the other threads. One involves a rapist recently released from prison, who went into prison vowing revenge of Fawley and maintaining his innocence. Adam’s pregnant wife, Alex, is certain she’s being watched, though she’s reassured by everyone that there’s no way the rapist could have slipped his monitoring device and turned up down the street from her home.
Adam is all in on the Oxford rape case and he’s all in when there’s a murder about halfway through the novel, and the outcome of this murder involves him extremely personally. I’ll try not to give anything else away, though as this novel has been out in the UK for several years it’s possible to find information on the story should you choose to look. But really, just read the book – you won’t be disappointed.
The story is told not just through straight up narrative, which shifts points of view between various members of the squad, but also through text messages, emails, handwritten notes, and the script of a podcast looking into the possible innocence and wrong imprisonment of the rapist. While this sounds complicated – and it is complex – it’s never confusing. If you’ve ever watched a Law & Order episode, you should have no trouble following the story. Hunter writes like she’s on fire, and I could not stop reading.
This is also a really interesting look at perceptions of reality. Public, private, social media-based perceptions – every player in the story has a bit of the “whole truth” but not all of it. The police investigation relies as much as anything else on perceptions as well and as you’ll see, the crime narratives constructed by police based on evidence and interviews, is not always the whole truth or even the correct one. This was a fascinating, compelling read. If you are a fan of police novels, snap it up. — Robin Agnew