Sweet Little Lies

Cat Kinsella is twenty-six and a Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police in London. She grew up in a troubled family and has never shaken it. Her father, a charming man with a loose way of living, still runs a pub in Islington.

When Alice Lapaine, a young housewife who rarely went out, is found strangled not far from that pub, Cat is called to the scene. Her team quickly turns its attention to Alice's husband. Then Cat receives an anonymous phone call tying the victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who disappeared in Ireland eighteen years earlier.

The name hits Cat hard. Her family met Maryanne on holiday just before she vanished, and even as a child Cat could tell her father was lying when he claimed to know nothing about the girl. Now she has to ask whether he harmed Maryanne then, and whether he could have harmed Alice now.

Cat is set on solving both cases and pushes the investigation hard, crossing ethical lines and breaking professional rules as she goes. This is a police procedural with a personal edge, built around a cold case and a fresh murder. The tension comes from a detective who has to dig into her own family's secrets, and who may not be able to live with what turns up.