Please note this book was previously published as A Little Death.
It’s 1:23 in the morning when Kate gets the call. News at this time is never good, but this call is one of the worst.
A body has been found in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Birmingham. It’s badly decomposed, but forensic psychologist Kate Hanson is sure she knows who it is.
Nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Williams disappeared a year ago. She was a good student who simply vanished off the face of the earth.
The post-mortem doesn’t reveal a cause of death. Elizabeth was found naked, apart from a silk scarf around her neck. But she wasn’t strangled.
Then another young woman is attacked out on a lonely road late at night. Same MO. Kate knows Elizabeth’s killer is still out there, and they’re not going to stop . . .
The clock is ticking. Kate must find them before they kill again.
A.J. Cross is a forensic psychologist and frequent court-appointed expert witness. She obtained her Masters Degree and PhD at the University of Birmingham, the latter relating to children as witnesses within the criminal court system. Her professional experience has included consultancy work for the Probation Service within its sexual offender unit in her home city. She currently lives in the West Midlands with her musician husband.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This is a forensic cold case mystery, featuring Dr. Kate Hanson and her colleagues. They all comprise the Unsolved Crime Unit.
When remains are found in a field near her college, she is identified as Elizabeth Williams. She's been missing for a year. There are no clues, no witnesses; the medical examiner cannot even say how she died.
When the team starts re-interviewing friends and acquaintances, their suspect list is rather small, but they still have nowhere to turn for clues. One suspect's wife is murdered .. and another young woman escapes the clutches of a man who tried to abduct her. Kate thinks these cases are all connected... and she thinks the killer is far from finishing.
I really enjoy the forensics aspects of this series. (I've read book 4 previously, but not books 1 or 2). Although 3rd in the series, this can easily be read as a stand alone. As always though, I highly recommending the books in order.
This is a well-written mystery, with stand out characters. I like how the people who make up the Crime Unit interact with each other. At times it is like watching siblings talk about the case and what it means and who did it. But at the end of the day, they pull together. I'm definitely going back to read the first two books of this most interesting series.
Many thanks to the author / Severn House / Netgalley for the digital copy. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
Okay, so that's book three of this series over and done with. Each book has found me more and more annoyed with the main character. She's a "strong, independent woman who don't need no man"...despite always needing men to turn up and save her at the end of every book. In the first book I appreciated the more realistic fact that short women of a slight built are almost always going to find themselves unable to win in an altercation with a man. But as each book has progressed, that realistic aspect of our sexually dimorphic species has been at loggerheads with Kate's feminist leanings.
She's supposed to be an expert on psychology, but claims to be oblivious to Joe's attraction to her. No normal woman finds herself attracted to a guy, but then not being able to figure out that she like the guy in question. That whole shtick is weak. And speaking of weak, Joe's a boring simp. She's cold, aloof, unreceptive to both his subtle and not-so-subtle cues. He just does the whole puppy-dog eyes thing and she plays ice-queen. I hate romance sub-plots in crime fiction. Just give me interesting murders, a winding, twisty story and a satisfying denouement. Leave all that "will-they-won't-they?" faff to Jane Austen or Danielle Steele.
This story felt a lot less captivating than the first two. I found myself rushing through it faster, just wanting to finish it and move onto the next instalment ASAP. I let my flagging curiosity lead me to latch onto a red herring early on, but by about 50% of the way through I had figured out what was going on and whodunit.
I still really like Bernie. He's a proper geezer! Julian seems like a reasonably well drawn character I can get behind; however, Maisie the daughter is an annoying, precocious, 13 year old whose scenes I skim-read. I just don't care about her.
Now I'm moving on to book four in this series. Hopefully the plot will be better in this next one. I think there are 5 titles in this series, so only 2 more to push through before I can move on to something much more interesting.
This is the third in the Dr Kate Hanson series, which I have so far enjoyed as the stories are interesting and well written. However they are totally different in feel from one another, which I find odd.
For example, in this book, the characters are all referred to by last name and speak formally. In book two, they were on a first name basis and spoke in a regional dialect. In the first book, it started out formal and ended up informal (iirc). It's not like it exactly takes away from the content, but it's weird. Like there are several people writing and they don't agree on the tone.
For me this was the best so far in the Kate Hanson series. This story was chilling in the most horrific way, and I felt that Hanson was truly driven to find the killer of both Elisabeth Williams, who disappeared a year ago, and the survivor of a recent attack which bore the same MO. Together the team of Watts, Corrigan, Hanson and Julian set out to piece the clues together and work their way through a comprehensive list of POI’s. As usual, Hanson’s focus is more on the psychological aspect to the attacks and, when it appears that there may be another young woman who disappeared and whose body has never been found, she realises that they have a repeater at large who must be stopped before he can kill again. The number of false starts and twists throughout the plot makes the reader want to get involved and try and solve the case, but the author has very carefully made it hard for us to do that. Even at the very end, when Hanson has worked out who the killer is, the name is carefully concealed from us and just as we believe we know who it is, we get a huge shock when the arrest is finally made. Hanson, as always, puts her life at risk by trying to take things into her own hands, but fortunately her team aren’t far behind her. The ending is interesting, as the side plot gives us an insight into Hanson’s past life and gives the reader the need to move onto the next in the series. Once more, I highly recommend both this series and the author, who is a terrific writer.
This series has improved as the author's confidence has grown. Along with Angela Marsons, this author is local and sets her crime scenes in local places too which adds to the enjoyment. This was a page turner which kept me eager to pick the book up right until the end which is always an indication of a good book!
I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Severn House. Thank you.
There are several previous novels in this series to feature Dr. Kate Hanson, a Forensic Psychologist with the UCU (Unsolved Crimes Unit) in Birmingham, England. I had not read any of the previous novels and had no problems beginning the series with this novel. I'm especially interested in reading mystery novels where the motive of a killer is explored and in this story Dr. Hanson plays a very large role in working the cold case. A body has been discovered buried in a shallow grave on the edge of a field and machinery is set in motion to identify the body. Once the identification is made the problem becomes very complicated since a cause of death cannot be established by the coroner. How can the team find out what happened to this victim if they don't even know how she died? All the resources of the cold cases team will be called into play to make headway on this one.
This case is obviously set in modern times, but I couldn't get any firm grasp on exactly what year the death occurred. I prefer to have some inkling of a date for a story so I can judge it fairly regarding the use of technology in solving the crime. Since there was no date I just had to mentally place it in this year and that all by itself caused me some problems. First, the initial investigation of the disappearance of this person must have been a very shoddy affair. There were multiple pieces of evidence which were never examined for forensic evidence and even the UCU didn't attempt to use that evidence until almost the end of the story. Why not? There was trace evidence found on the skeletal remains and yet, once again from a forensic standpoint, only the most cursory investigation went into identifying this evidence. In short, this investigation was totally unsatisfactory if you are a dedicated reader of mystery novels involving modern forensic evidence techniques.
Other aspects of the book which kept me from enjoying it very much have to do with the main character, Dr. Kate Hanson. She divides her time between her family life with her thirteen year old daughter, lecturing at a university, and working as a forensic psychologist for the UCU (which, by the way, my brain continued to see as ICU throughout the book!) along with the other members of the team. Dr. Hanson's ruminations on what the psychological reasoning behind the motive of the killer might be seemed to go on forever. I was reading this book on an e-reader device and I kept looking at the percentage read and wondering how many pages there were in the book. I would have guessed at over 400. The page count is 252. The story simply moved at a snail's pace for me. It was also annoying that the author referred to this main character as Hanson throughout the book instead of Kate or Dr. Hanson. I was pulled out of the narrative time and time again to remember who Hanson was. It is often the small things which combine to reduce my enjoyment of a novel. This one just had too many negative aspects to it for me.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Severn House Publishers for an advance copy of A Little Death, the third novel in the series about forensic psychologist Dr Kate Hanson and the Birmingham Unsolved Crime Unit.
When a decaying body is found buried in a field the UCU is called in. She is soon identified as 19 year old student Elizabeth Williams who disappeared a year earlier. With no obvious cause of death the team have their work cut out to find a motive and the killer.
A Little Death is a straightforward police procedural as there is no subplot except Kate Hanson's rather complicated home life. The investigation itself is far from straightforward with several suspects and no real evidence to give the team a steer in the right direction. It gets a bit repetitive as they keep interviewing the same suspects about the same things until the end when Kate has a breakthrough in her thinking and identifies the culprit, which I had already done. I assume that the constant interviewing of "persons of interest" is how real life investigations are carried out but it makes for boring reading.
I don't understand either why a freshly uncovered murder would go to the cold case unit or why, given the victim's high profile, there are only 1 full time and 3 part time investigators on the case.
A Little Death is a solid police procedural with a good premise.
“I’ve just figured out who the bad guy is and he’s very dangerous! No one else is around so I’m going to go confront him by myself and not tell anyone where I’m going. I’ll just leave a cryptic note for my student assistant.”
Seriously?
Also, while there is a Boston, Connecticut, given the references to a “Boston Irish Catholic upbringing” I think she meant Boston, Massachusetts.
Severn House Publishers and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of A Little Death. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.
A Little Death is the third book in the mystery series surrounding Dr. Kate Hanson and the Birmingham Unsolved Crime Unit. The author does a good job of getting readers up to speed, so it is not strictly necessary to have read the previous novels.
As I was preparing to write this review, I was struck by the number of comments regarding the classification of the central case in this novel as a cold case. Any case can become a cold case if there is no outstanding leads, witnesses, or evidence. Although cold cases that are years and decades old are more sensational, the body found of missing 19-year-old student Elizabeth Williams brought her mysterious disappearance back to the forefront of the investigative team.
The investigative process can be exhaustingly slow in real life, so it is not unexpected that the book gets bogged down at times. The repetitive nature of the detecting, coupled with the slow pace of the novel, takes away from what should have been a thrilling read. In an effort to show how smart Kate is, the author spends too much time having her explain the mind of a killer. I wanted to be surprised, to follow the investigation from its inception from the edge of my seat, but A Little Death did not do this for me. For these reasons, I would be hesitant to recommend the novel to other readers.
This is the third of five books in this series and my favorite by far. I recommend this book and series for those who like to read about criminal profiling when trying to solve a murder or catch a seriel killer. Kate Hanson is a forensic psychologist and university professor who helps the Unsolved Crimes Unit of the Birmingham (England) Police Department. She works with Bernard Watts, a seasoned detective, and Joe Corrigan, a firearms specialist and trainer from Boston (USA). The team also includes Julian, who is one of Kate's doctoral students and a computer whiz. The books in this series (or at least the three I have read) can be read as stand alone books as the case in each separate novel is different. The only continuous themes are the relationships among the team members and in some cases their family members. I have noticed that some readers have criticized the lead character (Kate Hanson) because of her personality or for being a feminist, woke, bad mother, etc. Personally, I admire and respect her as a dedicated criminal profiler, even if I sometimes find her personality off putting. Before discovering this author (A. J. Cross) and series, I had previously read the Tess Winnett (F.B.I. profiler) series by Leslie Wolfe. If memory serves, I came across this new author while looking for something new to read after having read all of Ms. Wolfe's Tess Winnett novels. I definitely plan to read the other books in this series, and I hope I like them as much as this one.
This is the first novel by A J Cross that I have read. It is the third in a series featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Kate Hansen. I found it to be a compelling, riveting thriller masterfully written.
Dr. Hansen is awakened during the night by a phone call alerting her to the discovery of human remains in a field not far from the college where she works. The pathologist is unable to identify how she died but they conclude that it is the body of Elizabeth Williams, a college student who had gone missing a year before. With virtually no evidence Dr Hansen and her police colleagues set out to identify a suspect. During the course of the investigation they identify two other missing women who may have fallen victim to the same predator.
As interviews proceed a couple of suspects spring to attention but the case against them is intriguing but not compelling. Farther along another suspect attracts attention but is probably a red herring. In the end Kate Hansen identifies and captures the killer but does so in a rather foolhardy manner.
Read this novel: You will not be disappointed. Now I need to locate the other novels in this very interesting series.
I was confused as to why this case was assigned to the cold case unit. After all, the body was found after just a year. That aside, it is a well written book. I liked Kate and the cops were an effective team.
Dr. Kate Hanson a forensic psychologist and partner DS Bernard Watts of the Unsolved Crime Unit located in Birmingham, England get a call out to a crime scene. A young murdered woman has been found after being buried for over a year.
The team sets about interviewing suspects and searching for clues as to why the young woman was murdered. Slowly, they build up evidence and then Kate has an epiphany. They bring the case to a conclusion.
Nicely done. Thanking Netgalley and Severn House/Severn House Publishers for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.
I'm downgrading this to a rating of 3.3, even though it's a fairly cracking mystery. The problem is the protagonist, Kate Hanson. She's a uni lecturer and forensic psychologist, for heaven's sake, so what's she doing interviewing witnesses on her own? That's a job for the police - at very least she should only accompany a police officer. Going on her own to confront someone she knows is a multiple murderer is insanity! She doesn't bother to let the investigating police know about it, either. The cliched and rushed ending is the reason for the downgrade, as otherwise I have liked the books in this series.
The Coldest Killer (Dr Kate Hanson Mysteries Book 3)
What another outstanding book and not solved until the last chapter. Someone who I would never have guessed either. These books are so enjoyable, well written and entertaining on every page. I recommend reading this series if you enjoy Mystery Murders in the plural.
The body of a young woman who had been missing for over a year was found in a field near the university she attended. The coroner could find no cause of death. Dr Hanson and the UCU team followed many leads in this thriller that surprised me with the ending.
Dr.Kate Hanson is again a moronic lead character Self centered. A bossy unfeeling idiot as a parent. A chicken shit about her ex. Stupid in thinking about relationships. And the writing just goes on and on and on and on and on….
The third Dr Kate Hanson psychological crime police procedural is another Unsolved Crime Unit case that is intriguingly plotted and relieved by domestic detail and nascent romance.
The ending was so confusing I deducted a star. I knew the "who" pretty fast, though I don't see how Kate figured it out from seemingly nothing. Didn't ring true.