BOOK REVIEW: The Last Girl (Maeve Kerrigan, #3) by Jane Casey

I love Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan series (as you can see from my reviews of The Reckoning and The Burning)!! The Last Girl is the third book in this British police procedural murder mystery series with a strong but definitely not perfect female protagonist. As I have said many times, what makes a strong genre book in my opinion, in addition to a compelling main character, are interesting and well-rounded secondary characters. We know it’s a genre book; there’s gonna be some horrific crime (usually a violent murder or three) and our hero is part of a team who is trying to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators while surviving/avoiding/managing interpersonal dynamics of the team members or familial/relationship drama (or both!). We return to these genre books not for the crime-of-the-week but because we are engaged with the characters due to our familiarity with their foibles.

Casey gets it. Her DS Maeve Kerrigan is at times frustratingly obtuse (especially when it comes to the relationship with her boyfriend Rob, another policeman) and is also very good at her job, despite her boor of a boss/partner, DI Josh Derwent. But as the reader we can both root for and rail against Maeve (sometimes in the same chapter!)

The mystery/crime in The Last Girl is particularly heinous. A mother and teen daughter are viciously attacked and killed in the living room while the daughter’s twin sister swam in the pool. The father was attacked (not fatally) in the upstairs bathroom. It turns out the family dynamic was a nightmare, starting with the father/husband who is a defense attorney whom the police had come across before in multiple cases and is a huge *ssh*le. But, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty, does it?

This third book in the series has a relatively surprising ending with a fair number of red herrings tossed in front of the reader for good measure. The longer arcs (Maeve’s increasingly serious relationship with Rob, the return of her dangerous stalker/peeping Tom, Maeve's professional career trajectory at the London Metropolitan Police Murder Squad) are becoming more significant than the resolution of this book’s crime. But that just makes me want to spend more time with Maeve, in the next book. Soon!

Title: The Last Girl.
Author: Jane Casey.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Minotaur Books.
Date Published: May 21, 2013.
Date Read: April 13, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.