“A dark and smart page-turner.” -The New York TimesIn this gripping debut procedural, a young London policewoman must probe dark secrets buried deep in her own family’s past to solve a murder and a long-ago disappearance.Twenty-six-year-old Cat Kinsella overcame a troubled childhood to become a Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police Force, but she’s never been able to banish these … Police Force, but she’s never been able to banish these ghosts. When she’s called to the scene of a murder in Islington, not far from the pub her estranged father still runs, she discovers that Alice Lapaine, a young housewife who didn’t get out much, has been found strangled.
Cat and her team immediately suspect Alice’s husband, until she receives a mysterious phone call that links the victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who went missing in Ireland eighteen years earlier. The call raises uneasy memories for Cat—her family met Maryanne while on holiday, right before she vanished. Though she was only a child, Cat knew that her charming but dissolute father wasn’t telling the truth when he denied knowing anything about Maryanne or her disappearance. Did her father do something to the teenage girl all those years ago? Could he have harmed Alice now? And how can you trust a liar even if he might be telling the truth?
Determined to close the two cases, Cat rushes headlong into the investigation, crossing ethical lines and trampling professional codes. But in looking into the past, she might not like what she finds. . . .
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Caz Frear’s ability to write tight, tense dialogue with a dark comedic slant is brilliant. I read Sweet Little Lies in one sitting, it is a terrific debut.
Reminded me a lot of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad novels—a troubled British detective solving a tightly plotted mystery that forces her to reckon with her own demons. Will definitely be looking for more by this author!
Wow, I just loved this book. Wonderfully written, very clever, good twists, and a fantastic young female British detective. I pray it’s part of a series.
A cracker of a book. Young detective, Cat Kinsella, finds herself investigating a murder with current links to her father and also harking back 18 years to a holiday she had as a child visiting her late mother’s family in Ireland.
The murder mystery at the heart of the book was perfectly paced with an excellent team of wise-cracking police investigators at the helm. We need a series. More Kinsella, Parnell, Steele and co. Now!
When Cat Kinsella was a kid, a local teenage girl went missing in Ireland while her family was there on holiday. She has always suspected that her father was involved and never believed his protestations that he knew nothing about it. When a woman is murdered in London 17 years later, she has ties to the missing teen. Now the case is one of Cat’s to solve and she must reopen contact with her estranged father and try to make peace with him as best as she can to get to the bottom of the mystery.
This book was a real page turner. Anyone with stressful family relationships will probably love it. There are also a lot of humorous moments and comments throughout the book that keep it from getting too dark. A great debut novel from an author I look forward to hearing more from.
If you are in the mood for a slow burn police procedural with a kickass female lead, look no further than Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear. This is a debut novel to boot, and I was very impressed by both the mystery and Frear’s writing. I thought the whole thing had a very slow burn quality, but as I listened to the audiobook I didn’t mind one bit. I LOVE police procedurals, and you definitely get all the things that come with one in this book. I really liked Cat and found the dynamic between her and her dad very intriguing, as well as how the murdered woman ended up tying in with her family. There isn’t anything too gory in this book either, so if you aren’t a fan of a lot of violence or gore, this is a great one to try.
The audiobook is very well done, as narrated by Jane Collingwood. It is just under 12 hours but let me tell you, it goes QUICK. I found myself completely immersed in the investigation and loved the way Collingwood brought Cat to life for me. She narrates every book in the series and trust me when I say I am A-OK with it! I had no idea who the killer would end up being and was very surprised by the ending. Both who the killer was, and some intrigue involving Cat and her family totally shocked me. I really appreciated that Frear didn’t inundate the reader with all of Cat’s backstory, even though you definitely still get to know her a bit. Sweet Little Lies was mostly about the case, and what a case it was. So glad I finally picked this one up, and I am excited to see what book 2 brings me!
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
This book is the debut novel by Caz Frear. It is the first in a series about Detective Constable Cat Kinsella. The murder of a young woman draws Cat into a case with connections to her estranged father and a missing woman from many years ago. Cat is treading on thin ice as she works with the team to solve the case while trying to hide its connection to her family. I look forward to reading more of Cat Kinsella.
Found it intriguing and fastpaced
At the center of this excellent debut novel is a twenty-six-year-old London police woman named Cat Kinsella. Estranged from her family, her father in particular, she lives alone in a tiny room, devoting her life to her work as a homicide detective while she’s haunted by developments that occurred eighteen years earlier when she was a child on vacation with her family in Ireland.
While on that vacation, Cat and her older sister, Jacqui, struck up a friendship with a budding teenage girl named Maryanne Doyle. Just before Cat’s family left Ireland, Maryanne suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again. Cat knows that her randy father, a tavern owner and a minor fixer for a crime boss, had been with Maryanne just before she disappeared, although her father steadfastly denied it when the family was questioned by the police in the wake of Maryanne’s disappearance. In the years since, Cat has been tormented by the fear that her father may have had something to do with the girl going missing. This has been the source of a great deal of tension between her and her father, even though she has never really articulated her suspicions to him.
Fast forward to the present day when a young married woman named Alice Lapaine is found strangled in London, not far from the tavern that Cat’s father still operates. Cat’s team is assigned to investigate the case, and initially the victim’s husband looks like an excellent suspect. But Cat is stunned when the investigation reveals that “Alice Lapaine” is really none other than the long-lost Maryanne Doyle.
Cat knows that she should immediately come clean with her supervisors about her link to the victim, especially since the body was found so close to her father’s establishment. But no one else on the team makes the connection and Cat struggles to maintain the secret while she attempts to unravel the twin mysteries of where Maryanne Doyle has been all these years and how she’s wound up murdered now.
This is a very dark and moody story, part psychological suspense novel and part police procedural. Cat Kinsella is a complex and interesting protagonist, and Frear expertly weaves a complex plot that offers up one surprise after another. The settings are very well done. My only concern about the book was the huge coincidence that would have the long-gone girl, Maryanne Doyle, turn up dead and Cat Kinsella be assigned the case. (“Of all the gin joints in all the world…”)
Still, that’s a minor complaint, and I really enjoyed this book a lot. I see it’s billed as “Cat Kinsella #1,” and I very much hope that we will not have to wait long for #2. This is a fresh and unique character, and I can hardly wait to see where Frear takes her next.
A gem of a story. An underlying family secret converging on the present day, with potential disastrous results. My favourite sort of premise!
I often find books written in the present tense difficult to get into but as this is first person and the style is both fast and slick, it was no problem at all. It was as though Cat, the protagonist (and relatively inexperienced police detective), was sitting opposite me across a table in the pub, relating everything in that shared anecdotal sort of way, with occasional “asides” (often very funny ones), so that I was completely mesmerised.
I understood her dilemmas, her discomfort, her fear at what might come to light and her anger at what she feels is her impossible situation.
Great book. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
This was my BOTM and I don’t regret choosing it. I’m not a big mystery fan but as I was getting farther along I could not put it down. I just had to know what happened. I loved the characterization and how unique every character was, especially Cat, the main character and narrator. Yes, it was a little slow and it felt like it took me forever to read but once I got close to the ending I couldn’t of read it faster. And the plot twist at the end?! Just when you think you have it all figured out the author throws something else at you. It’s a great book with the main character battling between what is right and what is wrong. Does family come before everything? Even if it could cost you your job and everything you believe in? How far would you go to keep your family safe? How many lies are willing to keep for them?
Behininning was a little slow. But it picked up and was an enjoyable read
A young detective investigates a recent death that harks back to a life-changing event from her childhood. The investigation hits way too close to home, and she finds herself hanging on to her job and her sanity by a thread.
I loved this book. The writer’s voice is fantastic. Gritty, witty, and so easy to read. Add in an intriguing story and great characters, and this book has everything I love in a thriller. I’ll be following this author.
Enjoyed this book very much, and definitely found it to be a page turner, with many twists and turns. The heroine of the book, Cat, a London police officer, finds past and present connected as she investigates the death of a woman who disappeared from the town she grew up in as a child. Cat’s suspect: her own father. Great characters that build as you read on, and a surprise twist at the end. Looks like this us Can Frear’s first book. I look forward to future novels.
I give a book 50 pages to get my attention. If it can’t do that, I don’t bother to finish it. 36 pages in, I was ready to return this book to the library.
I am glad I am finished with this book. I didn’t care much for it and I have read others like it, so I don’t think this type of book is for me. I get very bored with the speculations that are endless – maybe she did this or that, maybe it was this or that and blah, blah, blah. The book could have ended about 10 pages earlier also. It was anticlimactic also.