Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Christopher Masters, briefly infamous as the ‘Roommate Killer’, strangled three women over a three-week period in late 2012. His fourth victim Holly Kemp was never found, six years later with Masters dead her body is found buried in a field in Cambridgeshire.
What looks at first like a matter to tying up loose ends in the name of providing closure for the bereaved family gets more complicated as the major investigation team begin work. Questions arise over how she died and what Holly did in the last hours of her life.
Did the officers who took part in the original investigation make a mistake? If so, was Holly Kemp a victim of the Roommate Killer, or of an entirely different crime?
This is the keenly awaited second instalment in the Cat Kinsella series and fans of Frear’s debut novel will be pleased to know she is on top form here. The plotting is strong with plenty of twists and turns, and, more importantly, some pointed questions to ask about how far individuals are willing to go to protect their loved ones.
In Cat Kinsella - Frears has created a central character with a backstory that could double as a nightmare and a range of personal hang-ups that go with the territory. Her voice as the book’s narrator is frank and often funny without ever sacrificing the seriousness of the plot in the name of a good one-liner.
This is a book about the messy moral compromises that lead to murder being done and that help to keep it hidden after the event. Caz Frear has been rightly tipped as a rising star of British crime writing, this assured second novel hints at just how brightly she is going to shine.
