Shed No Tears: A Novel

Written by Caz Frear

Narrated by Jane Collingwood

Acclaimed and internationally bestselling crime novelist Caz Frear returns with her third superb novel featuring Cat Kinsella, a cop “on par with Susie Steiner’s and Tana French’s female detectives” (Kirkus Reviews).

Four victims. Killer caught. Case closed. . . or is it? 

Growing up in a London family with ties to organized crime, Detective Constable Cat Kinsella knows the criminal world better than most cops do. As a member of the city’s Metropolitan Police, she’s made efforts to distinguish herself from her relatives. But leading an upstanding life isn’t always easy, and Cat has come close to crossing the line, a fact she keeps well hidden from her superiors.

Working their latest case, Cat and her partner Luigi Parnell discover a connection to a notorious criminal: serial killer Christopher Masters, who abducted and killed several women in 2012. Though the cops eventually apprehended him, his final victim, Holly Kemp, was never found and he never confessed to her murder, despite the solid eyewitness testimony against him. Now, six years later, the discovery of Holly’s remains near Cambridge seems to be the definitive proof needed to close the case.

Still, a few key items of evidence don’t quite line up. As Cat and Parnell look closer, they find discrepancies that raise troubling questions. But someone will do anything to keep past secrets hidden—and as they inch closer to the truth, they may be putting themselves in jeopardy . . . 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062979889

Caz Frear

Caz Frear has a first class degree in History and Politics, and spent twelve years working as a headhunter before she started writing. She hasn’t lost her enthusiasm for networking, and is a popular member of the crime fraternity. She lives in Coventry with her husband. Her debut, the number one bestseller Sweet Little Lies, was the winner of the Richard & Judy Search for a Bestseller Competition 2017 and went on to sell over 250,000 copies. It was followed by Stone Cold Heart and Shed No Tears, both of which feature her police detective Cat Kinsella. Five Bad Deeds is her first standalone thriller. 

Reviews for Shed No Tears

[Tina · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

As of 2022, the recording still has a defect …

[Lesley Donovan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The recording has a serious defect with gaps every few seconds. I notified Scribd months ago but it hasn’t been repaired/replaced. Never had this problem before with Scribd, doesn’t speak well of tech department.

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the third novel in a series featuring Detective Constable Cat Kinsella, who, at 27, is an important part of London Murder Investigation Team 4. As the story opens, Cat’s boss, DCI Kate Steele, asks Cat and her partner DS Luigi (“Lu”) Parnell to re-open a six-year-old case involving serial killer Christopher Dean Masters, even though he was murdered in prison a year ago. All of his purported victims had been found but one: Holly Kemp, 22 when she died. Now Holly’s bones have just been discovered, but the method and place of her killing are quite different from those of the previous victims. As Cat and Lu revisit the old case, they find more disparities, and some startling lapses in the previous investigation as new secrets get exposed.In the background, Cat worries about her own secrets, even as she employs her considerable ability to drag secrets out of others and make judgments based what she finds. She muses, "My hypocrisy astounds even me.”The biggest secret she carries is the identity of her father, who is involved in the criminal underworld. No one knows about this connection, since Cat has taken her mother’s maiden name. Her sister Jacqui doesn’t even admit to the truth about their dad. Cat thinks about how memory works:“Details fade the second you turn your back. Inaccuracies grow. Your hard drive gets corrupted. It’s why Jacqui frames our childhood as something straight off an episode of The Waltons, while I seem to conjure up the bloodiest scenes from The Godfather. The truth is usually a gray blotch lying somewhere in between.”But that disparity in memory about the past colors their present too. As Cat observes:“Dad and Jacqui, splashing about in the shallow end of the conversation: floristry, X-ray results, oatmeal stouts, Finn [Jacqui’s son]. Me and Dad, it’s always straight into the deep end. One reckless plunge and we’re off. No topic too toxic. No pain left unexplored.”She both loves and loathes her father, who claims he has continued to work for the mob boss Frank Hickey only in order to protect her. But there is even more about him she is concealing: her father was involved in a case Cat worked on 18 months earlier, described in the first book of the series, in which a missing girl turned up dead. Against all the rules of police involvement, Cat not only hid her father's role, but got into a still-ongoing relationship with Aiden Doyle, the brother of the victim. Aiden, after all this time, is still unaware of the connection between Cat’s father and his dead sister. What would happen if he found out?And in fact, the cliffhanger that ends the book has to do with Cat and Aiden and their relationship. As for the mystery about Holly, it gets solved mostly by Cat’s dogged police work and persistence in spite of a number of twists and turns.Evaluation: The author is touted as appealing to fans of Tana French, and indeed, she has something of French’s same style. Like French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, this book combines an absorbing and well-crafted police procedural with an even more interesting drama about family secrets and interactions among members of the detective force. Frear's talent for writing places her in the top tier of mystery authors.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the 3rd book in a newer series I picked up and one of my new favorites. I love the lead in this series, which features Cat Kinsella who has a very unusual back story. In this outing a case thought solved comes back to haunt, possibly incriminating one of their own.This is a mighty fine police procedural, tightly plotted and steadily paced. It has the perfect balance of personal stories and happenings with police case and detecting. Plenty of legwork, putting together clues and red herrings, an extremely good series, at least imho. The cliffhanger at books end leaves me anxiously waiting for the next in series.ARC from Edelweiss.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The third book in the Cat Kinsella series will delight fans. When the bones of a woman missing for six years is found in a field, it is assumed she is a victim of the Roommate Killer but when things don’t line up for the match, Cat and her partner must find who did kill the young woman. I think the words “gripping, edge of your seat and tense” are often overused but in this case they fit. Nothing is as it seems and the pieces slowly come together