Great Concept, Flat Characters
Plot and premise
In Murder in the Family, Cara Hunter revisits a notorious unsolved murder through the lens of a modern true‑crime TV show. Back in 2003, Luke Ryder is found dead in the garden of his wealthy family’s London home. His older widow and three stepchildren all claim they saw and heard nothing, and despite a big police investigation, nobody is ever charged. The case becomes one of those cold, unsolved crimes that sits in the public consciousness.
Twenty years later, Luke’s former stepson Guy Howard—now a filmmaker—agrees to reopen the case as the new season of a true‑crime series called Infamous. A team of six experts (retired detectives, a lawyer, a psychologist, a pathologist and a journalist) are brought together to re‑examine the evidence on camera. Across the episodes, they revisit the crime scene, pull apart the original investigation, and challenge each other’s theories while Guy’s family are drawn back into the spotlight.
The clever twist is in how the story is told: instead of traditional chapters, you get episode scripts, emails, texts, production notes, news articles and online reactions. You’re effectively reading the case file and the TV show at the same time, invited to play detective and decide who you believe as secrets, identity issues and buried resentments start to surface.
My rating and overall reaction
Rating: 3 out of 5
I was really looking forward to this one and absolutely loved the idea behind it. The whole “cold case solved through a Netflix‑style docuseries” premise is brilliant, and the mixed‑media format feels very current. On paper, it’s exactly the kind of crime story and storytelling experiment I should adore. But in practice, it didn’t fully land for me.
What worked for me
I genuinely enjoyed the structure and the way the plot is delivered. The episode‑by‑episode investigation gives the book a bingeable feel, and the use of scripts, emails and clippings makes it feel like you’re watching a documentary and reading the evidence at the same time. The set‑up—with Guy inviting experts into his family’s past and into the house where the murder happened—is strong, and the show framework provides natural cliff‑hangers and twists.
As a concept, this is smart, timely and very much in tune with true‑crime culture and social media. If you love the idea of piecing together a case from documents and footage rather than following a single narrator, the format is a big plus.
What didn’t
It’s a 3 out of 5 for me. I really liked the format of the book and was really looking forward to it. Don’t read on a Kindle as some things don’t show up, and that absolutely impacts how you experience the plot. When the whole point is that you’re reading transcripts, visuals and different document types, missing or poorly displayed elements on an e‑reader make it confusing and pull you out of the story.
Beyond the technical side, I struggled with the characters. Despite all the drama around the family and the experts, I didn’t engage with any of them or feel much empathy. The mix of a large cast, the script‑style presentation and the constant shifts of perspective left it all feeling a bit unbelievable and muddled. The ending left me flat and a little unbelievable to be honest . Just a jumble I’ve read her books before and enjoyed them, but this standalone was a miss from me emotionally, even though I respected what it was trying to do structurally
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Who I’d recommend it to
• Readers who love true‑crime TV, podcasts and the idea of solving a cold case alongside a panel of experts.
• Anyone curious about experimental crime formats and mixed‑media storytelling.
• People who mostly read in print or on devices that handle complex layouts well.
You can buy the book here
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