At 26, Cat Kinsella has a promising future ahead with the Metropolitan Police Force in London where she's a Detective Constable. Even as a child, Cat enjoyed a good mystery and fancied herself quite the detective. When she was eight years old and on a family holiday in Ireland, a local teen went missing and Cat immediately suspected her father of being involved. The charming ladies' man, Mike McBride, who had never been opposed to getting a little on the side, had taken a shine to Maryanne Doyle, a 17-year-old vixen who attracted the attention and desire of teenage boys and grown men alike. As Cat put it, “I saw the way he'd looked at Maryanne Doyle, and I saw a lot more too. Heard a few things as well.”

While the disappearance of Maryanne goes unsolved and is largely forgotten over the years, Cat has always remembered and wondered what became of the beautiful teen whom she idolized. Cat can't help being gobsmacked when a local London woman, Alice Lapaine, is found murdered and dumped practically on the doorstep of the pub Cat's father manages. When Alice is found to have ties to Maryanne, Cat is transported back in time to once again question what her father knows about the missing girl. What became of the voluptuous, flirtatious teen who went out to Riley's for hairspray and never came back?

"...an impressive debut novel from Caz Frear, who knows how to keep the one-two punches coming throughout the entire book, leaving readers little time to catch their breath in between knockout revelations."

Cat is already attending work-mandated counseling sessions after having witnessed a disturbing crime scene involving a young girl and the girl's dead mother. She's worried that she may be transferred out of Murder and over to the Financial Intelligence Unit where she doesn't want to be. She's fighting a powerful attraction to her victim's brother, who is “six feet something of pure crackling energy and cheekbones you could cut turf with.” Now, the last thing she needs is to have her already shaky foundation knocked out from underneath her completely, something that could happen now that she's back in contact with her estranged father.

As the investigation deepens, it becomes apparent that Alice was a woman with secrets. Even her husband, it turns out, barely knew her, but there are other people from her past who perhaps knew her all too well. The question is, who had found out the truth about Alice and cared enough to silence her permanently?

SWEET LITTLE LIES is an impressive debut novel from Caz Frear, who knows how to keep the one-two punches coming throughout the entire book, leaving readers little time to catch their breath in between knockout revelations. Whether we're getting to know Cat, who “came out of the womb thinking the midwife was looking at her funny,” or pondering her dad, who's “still got that catch-all appeal that makes teenage girls want to grow up faster and elderly ladies reverse the clock,” we're involved in the action all the way, and we want to know the answers that come only by getting to the end of the book.