> Zed Book Club / Cara Hunter’s ‘Murder in the Family’ Lets Readers Be Citizen Detectives
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Cara Hunter’s ‘Murder in the Family’ Lets Readers Be Citizen Detectives
In her latest book, the bestselling crime novelist creates an interactive experience both on and off the page / BY Rosemary Counter / September 14th, 2023
Cara Hunter’s Murder in the Family bears so little resemblance to a traditional novel, even the author doesn’t consider it one. Written (mostly) as a documentary script about one family’s 20-year-old unsolved murder mystery, in between are newspaper clippings, historical maps, autopsy notes, floor plans, resumés (with headshots … more on this later), even Reddit-esque threads where “viewers” react to cliffhanger-filled episodes in “real time.”
Hunter’s seventh crime novel is as much a visual experience as it is a book, allowing readers to cross reference testimony with “evidence,” and solve the murder like a citizen detective. All this, by the way, lends itself quite well to the visual medium that is social media, where Hunter’s readers — all on their own, no forced marketing here — are currently solving the case in real time. On YouTube, for example, @megwithbooks — dressed in full Sherlock Holmes gear with pipe and magnifying glass, because why not — posted a full 45-minute video dissecting evidence, suspects and theories. Over on TikTok, @exlibrisjessica live-posted her theories as she reads (while also taking diligent notes). “I really think I might know who did it,” she says. “I just don’t have any idea why. Or how.”
It’s clear that Murder in the Family readers are having tons of fun espousing wild theories about who did it, dissecting suspect’s motives and shooting down red herrings. But, even as it entertains, the genre-bending book also has plenty to say about the world of true-crime, reality TV, and the murky line between entertainment and exploitation.
Zoomer called the well-published writer at her home in Oxford, England, for a lively chat that — despite lots of talk about violent, bloody murder — in the end, both parties agreed was an absolute pleasure.
Rosemary Counter: The videos popping up from fans about your book are so fun and amazing! Have you ever experienced anything like this before?
Cara Hunter: No, not really. It’s really taken on a life of its own online. In the TikTok video, she flips through it and you can see right away that this isn’t a normal book inside. The pictures, layouts, you know. I think people took one look and thought, this is unusual. Anyhow, that video has something like four million views on TikTok, and the morning afterwards, the book went onto the North American Amazon bestseller chart. I didn’t know any of this until I was doing that thing that authors won’t admit they do unless they’re drunk — checking my spot on the chart. I was shocked to see I moved from No. 36 to No. 1! It’s not even out over there!
RC: I can just imagine: Something strange has happened … but what? Have you ever written something so interactive before?
CH: Well, I’ve used mixed media in my books before, but in much smaller amounts. My first book was about a missing child, so it had a social media angle. Then, my next books had newsfeeds as well, so I could explore how they and the social media kind of feed off each other. Then I was adding podcasts, maps. I had my CSI guy draw me a crime scene — which people absolutely loved because they felt like they had the raw material and maybe could solve the mystery themselves. For this book, I thought, what if I pushed this even further, all the way, and gave readers nothing but transcripts, evidence, primary sources. Could I tell the whole story that way?
RC: You can and did, and clearly citizen detectives agree. It’s like an all new genre just for them.
CH: I certainly wouldn’t want to claim to have come up with something completely different, but if it feels that way to them, that’s fabulous. I wanted them to have that experience, but I’ve been completely overwhelmed by their response to it as an interactive book. That’s almost a contradiction of terms, isn’t it? It’s like a video game on the page.
RC: Would you even call this a novel? Where would it go in a bookstore?
CH: That’s a good question and I really haven’t thought about it. I’ve heard it described as true crime, which is funny to me as it’s entirely fiction. I’m glad it feels real to people. Maybe “Unreal Crime”? I have no idea!
RC: As fun as this book is to read and pull pieces apart, it must have been exactly that difficult to put it together to begin with.
CH: Oh, yes. I mean, I like a puzzle and I like a challenge, but it was definitely a lot. I suppose this problem was helped very much by the fact that it had a strong underlying structure; the episodes of the show provide the foundation. Each one, just like a TV show, works up to a cliffhanger. The idea of adding the TV reviews and the chat board came to me later. The chat board specifically works as a space to clarify things, plant ideas. If there’s something I need my reader to know but I’m concerned they may have missed, I could pop that in the chat room for discussion. That became very useful.
RC: And the TV reviews? Do they serve a double purpose?
CH: The TV reviews were a great space to explore true crime as a genre. If I needed a more serious space for perspective or criticism of the documentary or the genre, it could go right there. It was important to have that angle in the book too.
RC: Citizen Detectives are having a big moment, at least online. Is this a good thing?
CH: Sometimes, definitely. In the book, I talk about [the popular podcast] Serial, which brought injustices to life and had people looking at clues and re-examining evidence. [Its subject] Adnan Syed is a free man now, because of the podcast. It’s really a fascinating genre, I think. I watched a lot of true crime for this, like The Family Next Door, about the guy who killed his wife and two girls. That one stands out for me because it’s done just like this book is: There’s no narrator or anything, only videos, texts, posts she put on social media.
RC: For a book concept that’s so new, it’s also classic. I got a lot of And Then There Were None vibes.
CH: Yes, thank you. I tried to have the reader gradually discover that everyone’s got a secret. Things that are apparently random are actually not. I just love that book, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as well. [Agatha] Christie is so good and clever at convincing you to trust the narrator and then changing everything on you. You want to go back and read it all over again just to see how she did it.
RC: It’s so fun just to have the resumés, with photos, at the book’s beginning to refer to. They’re so helpful that I kinda wish every book had them.
CH: Let me tell you a funny story about that! I needed to use photographs, because I don’t have any prose to describe what my characters look like. But putting pictures in novels costs lots of money because you have to buy the rights to people’s images. So, my poor friends got roped into being my characters. The CSI guy is my real CSI guy, who helps me out with research all the time. And the forensic psychologist? That’s my yoga teacher.