Detective Inspector Adam Fawley is back in the second thriller by Cara Hunter – which means I got to enjoy more reflected glory (Cara is a friend) and another launch event.

Cara’s debut Close to Home has been a runaway best-seller, a Richard and Judy book club choice, and an audiobook starring Lee Ingleby. 

Publishers Penguin, who know a good thing when they see it, commissioned more Fawley, and six months later, here he is investigating another challenging (to put it mildly) case.

In the Dark opens with a disturbing scene (and I don’t mean the images of Morris dancing and Oxford’s other May Day festivities) – a young woman and her child are found, dirty, hungry and barely alive, locked in a cellar.

The woman can’t speak, nobody knows who they are, and the confused old man who owns the house is apparently as puzzled as anyone.

It’s hard to believe, but I reckon In the Dark is even better than Close to Home. We get to know more about Fawley and his past, more about the team, more about the quirky, wonderful city of Oxford, and actually more about contemporary Britain.

Me, Mr Pink Pie, in the pink shirt with Cara Hunter at the launch of In the Dark

But when it came to figuring out whodunnit and why, I was indeed totally in the dark.

The book was launched at a suitably subterranean venue, The Escapologist in Covent Garden, on Monday [July 2nd], and it was lovely to catch up with Cara herself and other members of ‘Team Fawley’, whom I’d met at the Close to Home launch in January.

I hope we’ll meet again in another six months for the launch of book three, No Way Out. I was delighted to be on the early reading panel for that one, and, dear reader, you are in for another treat!

You can order In the Dark here, and I suggest you do.

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