Review: Murder in the Family, by Cara Hunter
by
Stuart Holland
The core mystery has a lot of twists and turns that keep you guessing, but I struggled with this book for a lot of reasons. I found the script format difficult to read and at times confusing (for example, I missed a cliffhanger at one point and flipped back to it a few pages later after being confused).
The characters are often aggravating - outraged at eminently sensible things and seeming to forget that they’d been hired to make a TV show, not just to investigate a crime. They keep secrets that don’t need keeping and are frequently just terrible people.
There are a few inconsistencies about facts (like locked doors) which would normally be perfectly reasonable. But when the conceit of the book is that the reader should try to outsmart the characters and figure out a mystery first, they are glaring problems that make you doubt all real clues.
The snippets of public reaction between the chapters are interesting as a format. I’m a little disappointed that groopz.com doesn’t exist, not even as a tiny easter egg.
As spoiler-free as I can make it, I wouldn’t say the conclusion is a satisfying one. And it doesn’t live up to the twists and turns that set it up.
