Meanwhile, Fawley’s caught up in a personal case of his own. His heavily pregnant wife believes she’s being stalked and, when someone close to her is found dead, everything gets just a little more complicated.

If you’re reading this review before you have picked up this book, I would strongly recommend reading Cara Hunter’s other books first, as this one is apparently the fifth book in her DI Fawley series (a fact that I didn’t discover until possibly too late). I haven’t read the other books and I think that would account for some of the confusion I felt regarding Fawley’s personal life and the sheer amount of police officers that you need to keep track of in this book. I’m also being intentionally vague about the latter case, as I presume this is a huge spoiler for one of the earlier books.

All of that being said, I enjoyed this book hugely as a stand-alone. The sexual assault case was for this book alone and the rest is easy enough to figure out that accidentally starting the series at book five didn’t detract from the plot at all.

This book was completely enthralling. Everything seemed so clear-cut at first with the student’s claim against the professor, but there seemed to be a new- not entirely unbelievable- twist with every new page. Similarly with Fawley’s personal case, some parts were guessable, but this is the kind of story where, if you do guess it, you convince yourself you’re wrong and change your mind before it gets revealed. At least, that’s what I did.

This story is told in an interesting way, with the majority of characters having short chapters told in third person, one chapter being told in second, and Fawley’s chapters being told in first. There were also interviews, text messages and emails thrown in to keep things interesting. This was difficult to keep track of at first but, I’m assuming, if you’ve read the other books in the series, this format would be much more familiar to you. It did an excellent job of keeping up the pace, making sure we knew exactly who we were dealing with at all times, and adding dimension to characters that I originally disregarded a little.

Anyway, the takeaway is that I really enjoyed this book. It was fairly short, very pacey and full of twists and turns. It hooked me within the first few pages and I found that every new side-story that was added as we went through only added to the characters and the tension. I would of course recommend this to lovers of crime and twisty thrillers, though perhaps you may want to check out the others first.

A trigger warning: this book discusses, in detail, various cases of sexual assault.

RATING: 4/5