Little Bones
"...a real cliff-hanger ending, this is a highly-recommended wintery read."
Synopsis:
Investigating a routine break-in, Detective Garda Cathy Connolly makes a grisly discovery: an old wedding dress and, concealed in its hem, the bones of a dead baby. Then the dress's original owner is found dead in a Dublin suburb.
Searching for answers, Cathy is drawn deep into a complex web of secrets and lies spun by three generations of women.
Meanwhile, a fugitive killer has already left two dead in execution-style killings across the Atlantic. Now he's in Dublin with old scores to settle.
Struggling with her own secrets, Cathy doesn't know how dangerous – and personal – this case is about to become.
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Review:
'Little Bones' introduces Detective Garda Cathy Connolly, a feisty new addition to the growing number of female police detectives in crime fiction. It's always a risk, trying to come up with a character strong enough and interesting enough to stand out from the crowd and I'm delighted to say that Sam Blake achieves this in spades with Cat Connolly. Like all the best fictional detectives, Cat comes to us complete with her own complex back-story and personality quirks. She is strong-willed, independent, smart-mouthed and funny. She is, in short, a great character (as well as being a champion kick boxer). The plot revolves around one of the most original storylines I've come across in recent years. It's an intriguing concept that immediately made me want to read on past the first chapter. The dress is discovered when Cat is called out to a suspected burglary at the home of Zoe Grant, an up-and-coming Dublin-based artist. When Cathy learns that Zoe is the grand-daughter of Lavinia Grant, 'the doyenne of Irish fashion', the case takes an interesting twist, especially when Lavinia turns up dead shortly afterwards. Piece by piece, we discover the secrets and lies behind the privileged world of the Grant family. Like so many before them, the Grants would rather destroy those in the family who risk disgracing them, than lose their standing as one of Ireland's leading families. Three intertwined stories draw us deeper into Zoe and Lavinia's background and the origin of the bones. In Dublin, there's Zoe – still fighting against the complicated relationship she has with her grandmother, even after the older woman has died. In London, meanwhile, Emily Fox is trying to help a disturbed elderly woman called Mary. It's clear that Mary is hiding secrets but what are they and why do they matter? And finally, there's Angel Hierra, a dangerous killer who has come to Dublin for reasons not yet clear to us. Blake twists the different threads of these stories with great skill, drawing us forward to a knuckle-clenching ending as all three storylines come together in Dublin at Christmas time. With a real cliff-hanger ending, this is a highly-recommended wintery read. Cat Connolly is a great addition to the world of crime fiction and I cannot wait to see what happens to her next.