Sweet Little Lies
by Caz Frear
Blurb:
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 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...
My Reaction:
This was far and away a better book than the last police procedural I read. It's still not my very favorite genre-- but this one was pretty good. It could have been tightened up a bit in places, and some of the things that were meant to be funny weren't really amusing to me, personally, but whatever. I'd ideally give it 3.5 stars, but can't quite round up to 4, so it's staying at 3 stars.
I did see parts of the end coming. In fact, when it looked like things were wrapping up in a certain way and my prediction hadn't been realized, I was bemused. "My" ending-- the one I thought I'd seen coming-- felt so much better (if I may be so bold), and I was disappointed that the author had just left it hanging there, unused. And then of course we get it, after all, in that last twist. So, yes, I'm pleased that I guessed it, though that probably only means it was a bit predictable by the final third of the book and not that I missed my calling and should have been a star detective.
This is the first in a series. I might give the second one a try, at some point. Or maybe not. It's not at the top of my list, but it could be interesting to see where the story goes from here.
