All The Rage – Cara Hunter

A TEENAGE girl is assaulted and police investigating the case discover she is transgender.

The victim needs sensitive handling to talk about her ordeal, and the detectives have a more pressing issue: will the attacker strike again?

What was the motive? Was this a sexual assault stopped in its tracks when the attacker discovered the truth about the victim? Or did the attacker already know the victim's identity?

The fourth novel from Cara Hunter – one of the brightest. crime-fiction stars to emerge this decade – again plucks her novel's set-up direct from recent headlines.

But where the up-to-the-minute concepts of her previous three novels offered rich territory for storytelling, grabbing the reader from the get-go and presenting twist upon twist, All The Rage initially reads like a routine police procedural.

A very readable police procedural, of course, because Hunter knows how to keep the story moving even if she doesn't seem to be making the most of her material.

But stay with it, for the meat of this story can be found in the later courses rather than being piled on the plate up front – and it ends up being quite a satisfying dish.

The attack resembles an old case, one that involved lead detective Faraday – but the man responsible for that assault has been in prison for a long time.

Then there are inconsistencies amongst witnesses and other people involved in the case that other very different explanations about what happened.

Hunter is a well established author now and must already have a huge following: so maybe she doesn't need to give us shock-horror in the first few chapters to ensnare us.

Well worth a read.

David Knights