I chose Sweet Little Lies as one of my Book of the Month selections earlier this year. You know I enjoy a good mystery, and the synopsis intrigued me:

“In 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.

Your father is a liar. But is he a killer?
Even liars tell the truth . . . sometimes.

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 friend Kenneth also does Book of the Month, so I thought it would be fun to invite him to give his feedback in this review.

1) What did you like most and least about the book?
Most – the writing was clever and witty. I found myself laughing out loud a few times at the author’s wit, and who doesn’t enjoy a good Spice Girls theme?

Least – the plot felt too busy to me at times – many characters, whose actions I sometimes questioned as realistic in the scenario they were placed. Some parts of the plot were less believable to me.

2) How did you feel about Cat’s ethics regarding her obligations to her family and to her job?

Cat absolutely acted unethically and I don’t think it was right. But then again, it wouldn’t have made for nearly as interesting book had she come clean.

3) The damaged cop theme is common in a lot of police procedural novels. Do you feel like it worked here?

I haven’t read a lot of this type of novel, but I think it worked well. Cat’s damaged family created the damaged cop, who is now making choices that could implicate her family.

4) What did you think of the writing style and the plot twists? Would you read this author again?

I loved the writing style. The cheeky British humor and culture references were great. The plot twists worked, but I found them overcomplicated and at times unbelievable. Still, I would absolutely read from this author again.

5) Anything else you want to add

Geri never should have left the Spice Girls in the first place.

 

I generally like British and Irish crime procedurals, and Sweet Little Lies didn’t disappoint. Like Kenneth, I feel like some plot points were implausible, but they still managed to work.   It is a standard police procedural and there is nothing new or groundbreaking in the formula here.  Character ethics aside (because Kenneth is right, it’s the questionable ethics that give the characters their interest),  Frear does give us some characters I really liked: DCI Kate Steele and DS Parnell.  I liked the alternating story between the present and the past, and I liked that I didn’t easily figure out the plot twist.  I look forward to reading more from Frear, and think you’ll like this if you’re a fan of writers like Tana French.