My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Quercus Books for the ARC.

This is Book #3 in the Frankie Sheehan series - although I have to admit I haven't read previous ones, this is fine as a standalone. I thoroughly enjoyed this. The characters are really good and you really get to know them; it's well-written with believable and sometimes witty dialogue. I like the relationships in Frankie's team and how they all work together for the Bureau for Serious Crime in Dublin, where Frankie is the Detective Chief Superintendent.

It all starts off with a 'bang' - literally, but you have to keep reading to the conclusion which brings all the strands of this fast-moving investigation together.

Twenty years ago Debbie Nugent moved herself and her daughters, Margot and Kristen, to an isolated farmhouse outside Ballyalann, a small community with the backdrop of mountains and forest, and of course the wettest of Irish weather. Present-day, on a Saturday morning, Margot's boyfriend David calls the Station to report Debbie had been missing for 3 days, describing what could be the scene of an attack at her home. Frankie has only the story from the daughters to go on - no motive, no weapon, and no body, but it becomes increasingly likely that Margot knows more than she's telling.

Debbie has no social media presence, doesn't own a mobile phone and has very few friends. When Frankie starts to delve deeper into her background the layers of intrigue mount. We are taken into the realms of Police corruption, rival underworld gangs and undercover detective work. All leading to a cleverly plotted conclusion.

This was a really good read, I look forward to reading more of the series.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

debbie is missing

but the crime scene and the missing persons report dont add up
two sisters questioned, but there are more questions than answers

a suicide in the park

a frustrating case for frankie and her team but they have the bit between their teeth and could the answers be a lot closer to home than they would like

a compelling read with all the answers coming together at the end...

DS Frankie Sheehan returns in If Looks Could Kill which is the third book in the series by Olivia Kiernan.

Told in the first person this is a story with a number of twists that engage the reader and keep you turning the pages. The ending was also a surprise.

This is an enjoyable series and I look forward to future books

Recommended

My first DCS Frankie Sheehan book and a very good read it was.
Slow start but lots of layers and complexity with all the strands coming together at the end.
A daughter is accused of killing her mother - seems an open and shut case for Frankie and the team but soon there are links to the criminal underworld, police corruption and a struggle to uncover what really happened to Debbie Nugent.
An enjoyable read of Dublin Gardai procedures with believable characters and a storyline that keeps the reader hooked.

*4 Stars*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting read with interesting characters. Highlights what Police have to go through to get to the truth at times.

A great read. The first few pages almost put me off, adjectives galore! However it was a fantastic read and I would highly recommend.

If you are looking for gripping crime fiction then this should be just the job. I’m grateful to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to review this book. Dublin based detective Frankie Sheehan and her sergeant investigate the disappearance of a woman from a rural village. Judging by the scene at the womans home this very quickly appears to be a murder investigation but the lack of a body brings problems. The strange behaviour of her daughters arouse suspicion and what is the connection to the suicide of a man in Dublin? Strong and complex characters make for an intriguing mystery.
If like me you haven’t read the two earlier novels don’t worry this stands up well on it’s own but I’m sure like me you’ll enjoy it enough that you’ll want to search them out.

Aman kills himself in a park in Dublin , no trying to hide it he shoots himself in public , there is no obvious reason at the time but things start to reveal themselves later . Shortly after DCS Frankie Sheehan is called to a house in the Wicklow mountains where the mother of two daughters(Debbie) is found murdered and the house ransacked . One of the daughters lives abroad and is returning home to be collected from the Airport by the other daughter Margot, and her boyfriend . Suspicion falls on Margot and she is charged with the Murder . Frankie , however, is not convinced that she is guilty and continues o search for the truth , despite being told from "above" to drop it as they have a result . What follows is a plot by an undercover police officer to protect his family , police corruption and an unexpected result . A great read .

Frankie and team are called to a crime scene in Wicklow. Something violent has obviously happened and a woman is missing but is she dead? How long has she been missing? What do her daughters know? And what, if anything, has it got to do with a mans suicide in Dublin? the Bureau have to work out of a small local police station and deal with a woman who has lived a very private life so it is hard to follow her timeline.
This is another great read from Olivia Kiernan. It is tension filled and has loads of strings to the story that eventually all come together. I look forward to meeting Frankie and the team again.
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest review

I have read the previous books in the series and loved them so was looking forward to reading this. It didn't disappoint and was a taut, gripping mystery with strong characters and great writing.

I loved this book!

This is the third in the Frankie Sheehan series but the first book I've read in the series; I'll definitely want to read the first two.

The main characters are likable and I genuinely had no idea whodunnit for most of the book. The story is well written and I found I couldn't put the book down. Frankie is clearly a complex character and this comes across alongside the main storyline. My only complaint was that the last couple of chapters felt a little slow.

Loved this, hadn't read any of her others. That wasn't a problem though.
A good little who dunnit with a good plot. Plenty to keep the reader guessing.

Thank you to Quercus Books and NetGalley and Olivia Kiernan for this copy of this book!

If Looks Could Kill is number 3 in the Frankie Sheehan Series!♥️

Frankie and her team are sent to the rural and urban place of Wicklow where a woman who has mysteriously disappeared, which then makes her family to worry about her. Debbie has 2 daughters, one in which lives with her in her own home and the other one who just returned from her holiday. Frankie decides to question both of them, neighbors to Debbie and other people who have had contact with her/knew her. The circumstances in which Debbie goes missing are suspicious and very unusual straight from the onset. Could she of gone missing before people realised? How did the daughter she lived with not realise?

This is a twisty but unexpected novel, where you get sucked into the book and drawn into the investigation, characters and the plot and makes you put all the clues together to reach your own conclusions which is brilliant and i loved that i could do that! with an unexpected plot reveal/twist which was amazing

Thank you Olivia Kiernan for such an amazing thriller! 5 Stars Definitely recommend! Will review on Amazon as well when it is Published! and Post on social media (Instagram) too!

A satisfying read that takes you through the intricacies of trying to solve a murder. All the characters within the story are believable.

“If Looks Could Kill” is the third in the DCS Frankie Sheehan series, where she takes interest in a rural missing persons enquiry which unexpectedly leads to a wide-ranging investigation into more than anyone could have imagined.

The circumstances of Debbie Nugent’s disappearance look unusual from the beginning. Margot, her daughter, seems to know a lot more than she is prepared to admit but at the same time doesn’t really seem capable of harming her mother. The recent arrival from France of Margot’s sister and her partner make a cover-up look all the more likely. Frankie Sheehan and the team start putting the evidence together to secure a conviction. However while awaiting trial, more evidence comes to light that shifts the investigation in a totally new direction. By the end of the book DCS Sheehan has clashed with senior figures running undercover operations, become involved with two major drug cartels, contemplates a possible leak from inside the force and believe it or not, a good bit more!!

Olivia Kiernan has created another gripping thriller with such an unexpectedly clever plot that hits you like a truck!!

A brilliantly woven tale where nothing, ever, is as it seems, with outstanding characterisation. Sheehan is an inspired creation, a force of nature strictly on her own terms, and it's impossible not to root for her. Crime-writing at the highest echelons.

Really enjoyed this book. Hadn't read any by this author before but I will definitely check her out now!
A flawed detective, but a good one (all police thrillers have them!) Who won't rest until the case is fully solved. I liked this character so will be interested to see the growth of her in previous and future novels.
Thanks Netgalley and the publishers!

A man walks into a public garden in the heart of Dublin. It is lunchtime and the park is slowly filling up with people taking a well-earned break. He opens his bag and removes a gun. However, this is no modern day killing spree, instead he lifts the gun, places it to his temple and pulls the trigger.

If Looks Could Kill is the third in Olivia Kiernan’s series concerning Gardaí officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan, assigned to the Bureau for Serious Crime in Dublin. As she says, they are the first stop for all serious crime that may be of national interest. The death in the park, however, doesn’t initially come to her attention. It’s very clearly a suicide and therefore not of sufficient significance to merit investigation at her level. The case that does drop into her lap is that of Debbie Nugent, reported as a missing person, but from the blood-splattered state of her home, almost certainly either seriously injured or murdered. Initially, suspicion falls on the younger of Debbie‘s two daughters, Margot. It becomes increasingly clear that Debbie has been missing for much longer than was first apparent and, given that Margot lives with her mother, questions are automatically raised about why she hasn’t reported her absence sooner. When Margot is taken into custody and charged with the crime, Frankie’s boss, Commissioner Donna Hegarty, would like to see the case all neatly packed away but Shelly Griffiths, an old University friend and something of a rarity in crime fiction, a reporter who isn’t out just for a good story, contacts Frankie with information that suggests there may be other factors in Debbie‘s past that need to be taken into consideration. Why has she been so solitary, so private? Why has she so tightly controlled the lives of both her children, especially that of Margot? And what, if anything, is her connection with the man who shot himself in that Dublin park?

In an attempt to find out more about Debbie‘s background Frankie and her immediate boss, Jack Clancy, look to the local police force, in the personages of DS Alex Gordon and retired Detective Sergeant, Dennis Fitzsimons, for help. but no one seems to be able to give them any information that might suggest a culprit other than Margot. But what you see is not always what you get. Advising Frankie at the very onset of her career, her Gardaí officer father tells her

it’s important to know who you are, love, but more important to know how others see you.
What Frankie needs to do is to remember the corollary to that, namely that it is possible that how you see someone is how they want you to see them and not who they really are. Hampered by her uncertainty as to who can and cannot be trusted and thwarted by her attempts to dig deeper into the past of the Dublin suicide by the Chief of the Gardaí Surveillance Unit, who really thinks he is someone, Frankie is forced to turn for help to the very criminal element she should be trying to put behind bars.

Olivia Kiernan is an extremely accomplished writer. She has been likened to Tana French and I would certainly put her writing alongside that of Jane Casey. And you all know how well I think of her as a writer. Her characters are finely drawn, and she plots very tightly. She also insures that particular themes echo throughout a novel. Here, as I’ve already indicated, it’s very much to do with the question of the persona that somebody puts on as a public face and the question of who that person really is behind what may be a very deceptive mask. A further question that is raised early on is that of whether it is better to follow your instincts or to follow the evidence, a deliberation that is the source of much tension between Frankie and Commissioner Hegarty. Following events in the previous novel, The Killer in Me, Frankie vows to become more cautious, less reliant on instinct rather than evidence. Perhaps what she learns here is that you need to combine the two and use your instinct to make sure you look for evidence in the right place. If Looks Could Kill reinforces Kiernan’s growing reputation in the crime fiction world and if you haven’t already met her work then I strongly recommend her to you.

With thanks to Quercus and NetGalley for the review copy.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of If Looks Could Kill, the third novel to feature DCS Frankie Sheehan of An Garda Síochána.

Frankie and her team go to Wicklow to investigate the disappearance of Debbie Nugent. Judging from the blood in the house Debbie is almost certainly dead, but more puzzling is the behaviour of her daughter, Margot, who has been living in the house and didn’t report her mother missing. Further investigation hints at family secrets with a long history.

I thoroughly enjoyed If Looks Could Kill which has an unusual premise, plenty of twists and turns and finishes in an unexpected and possibly unforeseeable conclusion. After the prologue, whose connection will only become apparent late in the novel, the novel is told exclusively in the first person from Frankie’s point of view. In this novel there is good and bad in this approach and as the good outweighs the bad I like it. A single point of view allows the reader to get immersed in the story and live the plot developments along with the characters. It also means that the reader is not privy to additional information and can work the clues to reach their own conclusions. It adds to the interest and encourages page turning. Also, Frankie has a clear, likeable voice. The downside in this novel is that her thinking is muddled. There are plenty of things she should have been doing early in the investigation and didn’t. This, it turns out, is a deliberate ploy by the author as these things come into play later when the investigation takes a turn in a new direction, but their early omission creates a frustrating impression of muddle and unprofessionalism.

This early false start aside the novel jogs along at a fast clip and is quite compulsive as Frankie and the team strive to find out what happened to Debbie and deal with a host of other issues uncovered during their investigation. I certainly didn’t foresee where the novel would end after the first few chapters. It’s quite a feat to move the novel as far as the author does.

If Looks Could Kill is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

This is the third in Olivia Kiernan's Frankie Sheehan series and it is the best so far. Like many cops in crime fiction, Frankie is troubled and fallible but a darn good cop nevertheless. The principal characters are all well described and the atmosphere of the Dublin area comes across strongly. This book has everything, a bloody corpse, gang rivalries, bent cops and plenty of intrigue. A thoroughly enjoyable read.