Hope to Die: A gripping new detective crime thriller novel from the author of the tiktok mystery sensation, MURDER IN THE FAMILY (DI Fawley series, 6)

The police arrive at a modest country house to find a dead body, or at least a torso and limbs, the man’s head having been blasted off by a shotgun fired at close range. The seventy-year-old householder claims he killed the victim, an intruder, in self-defense. His wife, who says she remained in bed when he got up to investigate a noise downstairs, confirms his account. A straightforward home intrusion, then, that sadly ended with a fatality. So thinks DI Adam Fawley of the Thames Valley Police until he and his colleagues spot some oddities and unexplained gaps in the pair’s story. This premise, with its hint of an underlying mystery, is enough to snag the reader’s interest, but after that, the narrative explodes as the police dig deeper into the extraordinary events leading to the shooting. At the heart of the story is a woman incarcerated for fifteen years for a murder she vehemently denies committing. The efforts of the police to peel back layer after layer of the deceit and deception lying behind her conviction and the shooting make Hope to Die one of the finest police procedurals in recent years, a five-star winner.