Shed No Tears (DC Cat Kinsella #3) by Caz Frear
Genre: Crime fiction, Police procedural
Read: 23rd August 2021
Published: 23rd July 202
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Four victims.
Killer caught.
Case closed . . . Or is it?
Christopher Masters, known as 'The Roommate Killer', strangled three women over a two-week period in a London house in November 2012. Holly Kemp, his fourth victim, was never found.
Until now.
Her remains have been unearthed in a field in Cambridgeshire and DC Cat Kinsella and the Major Investigation Team are called in. But immediately there are questions surrounding the manner of her death. And with Masters now dead, no one to answer them.
Did someone get it wrong all those years ago? And if so, who killed Holly Kemp?
MY REVIEW:
I always tell myself not to start any new series as there are so many out there already and I can't keep up. I didn't know SHED NO TEARS was the third in a series when I requested it otherwise I wouldn't have but I have to say it was a pleasure being in Cat Kinsella's company for a few hours or so. I loved the first person narrative of her character and the witty quips she constantly delivered throughout her narrative. They were quick and they were sharp and sometimes intensely amusing. It kept the story from becoming boring as without her witty narrative throughout, things would have dragged a lot more.
The story begins in Caxton in Cambridgeshire where DC Cat Kinsella and her partner DS Luigi Parnell have hailed up from London from the Met to investigate the skeletal remains that have been uncovered in a shallow grave covered by logs. What struck Cat from almost the off was that the body had been hidden rather than buried, which alluded to the killer being in too much of a hurry to take the time to bury his victim. And the killer they liked for this murder was Christopher Masters, deceased, more infamously known as The Roommate Killer. They suspected the remains to be that of his fourth victim, Holly Kemp, who disappeared two days before Masters was arrested for his crimes.
On 23rd February 2012, Holly Kemp was seen walking down Valentine Street in Clapham and up to the door of number 6 where she knocked and the door was opened by none other than Masters. That was the last anyone saw Holly. Except her killer of course. And as Masters had been on a spree, collecting women answering his ad for a roommate - hence the moniker "The Roommate" - before torturing and killing them in the space of just two weeks and she had last been seen knocking on his door, Holly was thus labelled as his fourth and final victim. But was she?
All of Masters' victims had been tortured, strangled and left naked in pretty much the same place. Holly's remains, once they were found, weren't even in London but 100 miles away in Cambridgeshire. Fibres had been found with her remains indicating that she'd still been clothed at the time she was disposed of, her hyoid bone wasn't broken suggesting that she had not been strangled and as a complete stray from Masters' MO, she'd been shot in the back of the head execution style. That's just not a different MO...that a different beast altogether.
From the moment Holly's remains were discovered, The Roommate case was re-evaluated as the team began to dig into Holly's life and her death to ascertain if she was indeed Masters' fourth and final victim. He himself had been vague on the matter. First he said had killed her, then he said he didn't, then he did, then he didn't...and so on. Anything he had said with regards to Holly couldn't be trusted and so the team has to re-open the case into her disappearance six years on.
But as Cat and Parnell dig deeper, they uncover a litany of discrepancies made at the time of the original investigation. Is this a case of bad policing or the fact that once they found an eyewitness who saw Holly enter Masters' house they decided that there was no need to look further? But isn't that in itself bad policing? Because shouldn't all avenues be investigated before coming to a conclusion? Cat fears that something is amiss and it smells distinctly dodgy. But then of course the SIO at the time, DCI Tessa Dyer's husband was terminally ill at the time and she had a lot going on. Maybe Tess missed something because her mind wasn't completely on the job - that would understandable under the circumstances. So Cat's boss, DCI Kate Steele calls Tessa, now a Superintendent, in on to help liaise on the investigation.
SHED NO TEARS is a tense and gritty police procedural peppered throughout with Cat's first person witty narrative as she describes her various colleagues, suspects and even her own family. It kept the story from becoming boring as the banter and the investigation appeared to just bounce around the incident room at times. I loved Cat, not so much for her strong character but for her humour and wit which I totally love.
Overall, SHED NO TEARS is a satisfying read with grit, tenacity and a witty humour akin to Stuart MacBride. An enjoyable read with a somewhat surprising outcome.
I would like to thank #CazFrear, #Netgalley and #BonnierBooks and #Zaffre for an ARC of #ShedNoTears in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
She has a first-class degree in History & Politics, which she's put to enormous use over the years by working as a waitress, shop assistant, retail merchandiser and, for the past twelve years, a headhunter.
When she's not agonising over snappy dialogue or incisive prose, she can be found shouting at the TV when Arsenal are playing or holding court in the pub on topics she knows nothing about.
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