Available here (paperback 2019)

Many years ago, thanks to her first book Sweet Little Lies, I fell in love with the writing style of Caz Frear and her Cat Kinsella world. Stone Cold Heart only enhances all of those feelings and is done masterfully to allow you to recall pieces from the first book but without it being essential to understanding this second one.

Things like references to Cat no longer smoking drugs could easily just be a passing comment to her past but from reading the first one you know she used to do that a lot. Her love interest being involved in the previous murder Cat was investigating in Sweet Little Lies. Comments on her work partner getting all into health and just how different that is from the old Parnell. So many of these things can be taken alone and without any previous context.

There is one strong plotline though that you would be a bit bemused by if you hadn’t read the first one and it lines up as a bit of a cliffhanger to take you into the third book; The murder of the girl in the first book, her families involvement, and what a close family friend knows about it all continues to play not only through Cat’s head but becomes an increasingly difficult juggling act of risk throughout.

The murder mystery plot in Stone Cold Heart is really fascinating in itself and leaves you pondering who the guilty party is and why. A young woman staying in the UK to ‘find herself’ whilst needing to get away from her home country for a while is found, with a slap mark on her face and a smashed up head, by her flatmate after a weekend of partying. At a certain point in the book I established with myself that I didn’t think it was either of the two main suspects but then later on I began to doubt that again, feeling like maybe I had missed some key piece of evidence that put a bit arrow at somebody, and it really kept me captivated until the end; And oh the ending was a shocker of a revelation that did not disappoint.

The third book, Shed No Tears, is already out and I will most certainly be getting stuck into it very soon to see the over-arching plot around Maryanne Doyle and Cat’s family continue on whilst Cat no doubt gets put onto another murder case for us all to get to solve together.