In many ways it reminds me of a child’s story itself. I have to say that I find it very hard to critique this novel. It is hard to say more without giving too much away, but that was the point at which even my well known ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast gave way and I read on simply to see what Cara Hunter would pull out of the hat next but not believing a word. As someone who has spent four decades in primary education and three of those actively researching the stories that primary children write, I don’t know what surprised me more, the story that this eight year old is supposed to have written or the response of the teacher who read it. In a series of flashbacks we see her not only unpicking elements of her family’s own back story far more effectively than the police manage, but then reflecting the anger against her parents which her discoveries provoke in an anti-fairystory she writes for her teacher.

The one person who apparently has been aware of much of this unease is Daisy herself. It isn’t so much a question of who could possibly be responsible for Daisy’s disappearance as who can safely be ruled out.

Layer after layer of deceit and mistrust is revealed as old family histories come to light and current tensions explode in the faces of all concerned. Neither is the happy family unit that they would like the world to perceive anything more than surface dressing. None of them is quite what they seem, not even ten year old Leo, Daisy’s solitary and much bullied brother.

The reader is soon aware that some type of tragedy has befallen Fawley’s own child, Jake, and all eyes are on him to see how he will cope with this, his first child-centred case since his son’s death.Īs the Press and social media watch on with more self-indulgent interest than concern, Fawley and his team begin to uncover a web of lies at the heart of the Mason family. DI Adam Fawley is detailed to head up the enquiry.

No one has seen Daisy since she left school that afternoon. However, it soon becomes apparent that she and a friend exchanged fancy dress costumes and it is the other child people have reported as attending the party. The initial assumption is that she has vanished during the course of a summer barbecue given by her parents in their home near the Oxford canal.

Close to home by cara hunter