In the Dark

Acknowledgements

There’s a wonderful group of people now on ‘team Fawley’, all of whom have helped me make, shape and refine this novel. Most notably my fabulous, patient and supportive agent, Anna Power, and my two editors at Penguin – the equally delightful and insightful Katy Loftus and Sarah Stein. I also want to thank my fantastic PR teams, both in the UK – Poppy North, Rose Poole and Annie Hollands – and in the US – Ben Petrone and Shannon Kelly.

I also want to say a very big thank you to my expert advisers – Joey Giddings, CSI extraordinaire, who also drew up the crime scene sketches on pages 45–6; Nicholas Syfret QC for his advice on the legal side; and Detective Inspector Andy Thompson for invaluable help on police procedure. Also Dr Ann Robinson and Nikki Ralph. I have tried to make the story as accurate as possible, but as in all works of fiction there are a few places where I have exercised a degree of artistic licence. For example, the procedures involved in questioning vulnerable adults are very complex, and I do not pretend to have captured every single detail 100 per cent. Needless to say, if there are any errors or inaccuracies these are down to me alone.

Thanks too to my ‘first readers’ – my husband, Simon, and my dear friends Stephen, Elizabeth, Sarah and Peter. And also to my superb copy editor, Karen Whitlock.

And finally it seems odd to thank a city, but I couldn’t have written this book without drawing on the special ‘genius of the place’ of Oxford. It’s an endlessly inspiring and surprising town, and I’m very lucky to live there. However, needless to say, my characters are entirely the products of my imagination, and not based on any real individuals. Many of the places are my inventions too, though some are not. The Wittenham Clumps are real, as are the Cuckoo Pen, the Money Pit and the legend of the raven. The Iron Age remains of a man, a child and part of a dismembered female have indeed been discovered at the Clumps in recent years, and one theory is that the female was part of a human sacrifice. But there has never, to my knowledge, been a proposal to build a housing estate in the area.

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in Penguin Books (UK) 2018

Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2019

Copyright © 2018 by Cara Hunter

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Hunter, Cara, author.

Title: In the dark / Cara Hunter.

Description: New York : Penguin Books, 2019. | Series: DI Adam Fawley ; 2

Identifiers: LCCN 2018037216 (print) | LCCN 2018038983 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524704858 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143131069 (paperback)

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Mystery Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6108.U588 (ebook) | LCC PR6108.U588 I5 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037216

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: Jaya Miceli

Cover photograph: Danielle Kiemel / Getty Images

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