FELINE FOXINESS: REVIEW OF THE CAT TRAP
Investigative reporter Emma Boylan left her husband and is living with Detective Inspector Jim Connolly. Iseult, Connolly's ex-wife asks him to visit her at precisely mid-day at the house that her father bought them as a wedding present. There is no answer at the door and Connolly lets himself in and wanders through the house eventually discovering the body of Iseult in the garage, an apparent suicide.

This is the start of a complex, exciting story set among the beautiful people of Dublin. Well the women are beautiful; the only thing attractive about most of the male characters is their wealth.
Jim Connolly is arrested for the murder of both Iseult and her friend Nuala Buckley whose badly beaten body is found later on the property, and Emma begins an investigation to find the real culprit among the cast of larger than life characters.
I don’t want to go into the plot any more and would advise readers to avoid reading the front flap which I think reveals too much.

Ireland is apparently awash with European Union grants and the economic boom is delivering wealth into the hands of those who probably had a strict Catholic upbringing in convent schools or Jesuit boarding schools.

This is a heady cocktail and KT McCaffrey, who has written six previous Emma Boylan novels, has produced a really good mystery, with some social commentary on the various ills and excesses of the modern age; drugs, ostentatious wealth, the fear of old age, colonic irrigation, anal bleaching, and rich trophy wives with too much time on their hands.

This is a well written real page turner, and while I found his strong female characters great fun to read about I would probably run a mile if I met them in real life. You don’t meet many wealthy women in dark glasses when you drive a Nissan Micra, apart from my 96 year old mother in law of course.

Murder, sex, wealth, glamorous but sinister women, and the glossy world of the Celtic Tiger makes a pretty unbeatable combination for good crime fiction.

The book's cover is both eye catching and a good introduction to the story.
This is a really enjoyable read with enough red herrings to satisfy the most discerning crime fiction addict, and some very topical subject matter.

“I firmly believe they over-prescribed anti-depressants for Nuala; the doctors seemed to rely way too readily on handing out pills to those they considered mentally ill.”

“His grandiose vision for Emma saw her as a latter-day John the Baptist, her mission to prepare the way and spread the gospel of the new political Messiah.”
Highly recommended.
Reproduced by Kind Permission from Crime Scraps .

It's a Crime! (or a mystery...)
REVIEW
First up, you can buy K. T. McCaffrey's novel The Cat Trap via Amazon here. The cover is eye-catching and promises a dynamic story with a strong female focus, so what is delivered?

Early scenes central to the plot are mixed with some other quite sinister ones. It soon becomes apparent that there are some very malign women operating in Dublin. And just what is the link? In crime fiction the setting for low life activities often falls to those with little money; but here, it's with those with too much money and time on their hands that we enter that sinister and eerie world.

The novel is great on suspense and full of red herrings. You really do have to read all the way to the end to fnd out the truth, as Emma eventually does. There are plenty of strong and memorable characters, but are they all the seem to be?

Lastly, reading can also be an education. I was familiar with colonic irrigation but I'd never heard of "anal bleaching". (Go on, Google it yourself if you don't already know.) I mention this as an example of the world entered in this novel. How some live...

The Cat Trap is a classic suspenseful mystery, brimming with malevolent and misplaced motivations and a welcome addition to the crime fiction reader's bookshelf. Just make sure it's high up in the To Be Read list.
Reproduced by Kind Permission from Itsacrime.