Cara Hunter

Cara Hunter is glowing. With her new novel Making A Killing being published next week, the brilliant podcast Watching The Detectives a great success, and things ticking along nicely on Murder In The Family‘s TV debut, all is good in her world.

The best-selling Oxford crime writer is also 2000 words into her next stand alone novel, so grabbing her for a chat is tricky, but we finally managed to sneak in a quick working lunch.

‘Starting a new novel is like getting a super tanker going, but once you get going, it’s hard to stop’

Appearing at Oxford Literary Festival‘s Crime Saturday (March 29) with her criminal fact checkers DI Andy Thompson and former crime scene investigator Joey Giddings, the trio plan to dissect the hilarious unrealities of television police work, in Repeat Offenders: ‘It must be true, I saw it on TV’.

DI Andy Thompson and former crime scene investigator Joey Giddings

It’s the same duo that Cara not only works with to ensure her books are factually correct but whom she runs the brilliant podcast Watching The Detectives with, where they dispel the myths and misnomers around TV crime shows.

“People absolutely love it because Joey and Andy are really charismatic and fascinating. We choose a different topic every time, from forensic botany and insects, to criminal proceedings, and highlight the falsehoods in TV crime,” she explains.

The trio record these live debates and then use them on their podcast (available on Apple and Spotify). https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-29/repeat-offenders-it-must-be-true-i-saw-it-on-tv

All of which is a nice diversion from Cara’s hugely successful writing career, nearly two million copies and counting, the majority of her crime novels based around DI Adam Fawley and his team solving brutal murder cases in Oxfordshire.

The latest, Making A Killing, is being published on February 13, and revisits her first novel Close To Home, which centres around a missing eight year old. Left on an ambiguous note, Cara has now picked up the reins eight years later to ask what really happened to Daisy Mason.

DCI Adam Fawley remembers the case well, he arrested Daisy’s mother for her murder himself. But Daisy’s body was never found and new forensic evidence at a murder scene calls the whole case into question.

Cara Hunter – credit Justine Stoddart

As page-turningly suspenseful as ever, Making A Killing, sees the Oxford team race to solve the new mystifying case, with Cara’s notorious nail biting finish to hand.

It meant blotting her revered detective Adam Fawley’s copy book in the process, because how can Daisy be alive if her mother has been convicted of her murder? But as Cara says: “I think it makes it more realistic because the police don’t always get it right. Fawley had enough evidence to convict her, and he believed that’s what happened. But this new evidence proves otherwise,” she smiles enigmatically.

So why now? “There were a lot of purposefully unanswered questions at the end of Close To Home, that I knew I could revisit, but I had to wait until Daisy was 16, which meant I could leapfrog Covid,” she says. “But it also enables us to see into Daisy’s mind, the mind of a psychopath.”

Cara Hunter

Using her trademark, multi-media scraps of social media, news reports, journals, texts and trolling, Cara leaves it deliberately open, allowing her millions of fans to make their own decisions.

So when are we going to see Cara’s much hyped global bestsellers on the TV? “The wheels are rolling,” she says. Sam Mendes bought Murder In The Family and work is progressing on the script, while the DI Fawley series rights have also been bought.

“I think we might see Murder In The Family on TV first,” Cara says, “but things in television progress very slowly and then very fast, so I’m pretty relaxed about it.”

As for the next stand alone book, Cara is 2000 words in, and already fully committed, and based around a crime solving reality TV show.

Cara Hunter – credit Justine Stoddart –

“I’m really enjoying it, because ordinarily I map everything out before I start, so I know what will happen but with this I have no idea who did it yet.

“Starting a new novel is like getting a super tanker going, but once you get going, it’s hard to stop, so it’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time,” she grins.

And with literary trips and book signings planned all over the globe, including a trip to Rio in Brazil, Cara Hunter’s 2025 is already shaping into another epic blockbuster of a year.

Making a Killing is published by Harper Collins on February 13 and available in all good bookshops and online.

Cara Hunter is appearing with Andy Thompson and Joey Giddings on March 29 at Pusey House Chapel at Oxford Literary Festival BOOK HERE. She will also be signing books and discussing her crime fiction at The Westgate Library on February 15 at 2pm BOOK TICKETS HERE and St Barnabas Church in Jericho on February 26th BOOK TICKETS HERE