The Doll's House

The Doll’s House is a crime thriller by Louise Phillips. In the book, a psychologist must find a serial murderer before he kills his next victim. It’s the second book in the Dr Kate Pearson series, and it was first published in 2013. In the same year, it won the Best Irish Crime Novel of the Year. Phillips is the bestselling author of multiple crime and psychological thriller novels. She teaches crime fiction at the Irish Writers’ Centre, and she’s won various literary bursaries. Her other literary awards include the Jonathan Swift Award and the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice platform.

The central character is a woman called Dr. Kate Pearson. She’s a criminal psychologist in Ireland. Her main job is helping the police solve murders by profiling murder suspects, but she has her own roster of regular patients. In the first book, her husband left her because she spends so much time at work and not enough time with her family. She’s lonely and hurting, but she never lets anything stand in the way of her work.

The book begins with a celebrity murder. Police find Keith Jenkins, a popular talk show host, murdered in a Dublin canal. Since Keith is a celebrity, and his talk show covers controversial subject matter, there are many possible motives for the killing. Kate knows she has her work cut out for her with this case, especially when she’s paired up with her least favorite detective, D.I. O’Connor.



O’Connor is a good detective, but he’s an alcoholic. He’s unpredictable and unreliable, and he doesn’t speak much. Kate is determined to help O’Connor solve the case quickly so that she can stop working with him. However, while Kate works on a suspect profile, there’s another murder. Someone else is found in the canal, but no one can link him to Keith. Kate suspects that there’s a serial murderer at work.

Meanwhile, Phillips introduces readers to another major character, Clodagh Hamilton. Clodagh is a middle-aged woman with psychological trauma and alcoholism. She knows that she can’t recover from alcoholism until she deals with long-buried childhood memories of abuse and violence. She visits a hypnotherapist for help. The hypnotherapist encourages Clodagh to reconnect with her childhood using her much-loved dolls.

In the meantime, Kate and O’Connor make progress with the murder investigation. They discover that Keith and the other victim knew each other. Although they weren’t close when they died, they spent a lot of time together years ago. Kate believes that the murderer has a grudge against these men. This hunch helps her build a criminal profile, and it isn’t long before O’Connor connects the victims to the Hamilton family. O’Connor must find more evidence before he can make any arrests.



As Kate and O’Connor piece together the mystery, Clodagh works on her memories. She has flashbacks of a drowning years ago, and she can’t understand what she’s seeing. She’s convinced that she saw something so horrific that she’s blocked it out. What she doesn’t know is that this drowning is linked to the recent murders.

Clodagh realizes that her father drowned 35 years ago. Everyone told her that he died in an accident, but now she isn’t so sure. She wonders if the drowning has anything to do with why her mother doesn’t like her very much. However, Clodagh believes that she can’t possibly be responsible for her father’s death. She was only a baby at the time. She learns that her older brother, Dominic, is keeping a big secret from her, but she can’t convince him to reveal it.

Clodagh feels lost and alone, and she doesn’t think she can trust anyone. She can’t rely on her husband, Martin, because he suffers from his own mental health issues. He physically abuses Clodagh regularly. Clodagh’s daughter knows what’s happening to her mother, and she’s struggling to cope with it all. Meanwhile, Dominic refuses to tell Clodagh what he knows about the drowning incident. He’s dealing with the past in his own troubled way.



In the meantime, Kate and O’Connor work frantically to solve the case before anyone else dies. It’s obvious that they fancy each other, but they’re not ready for a romantic relationship yet. O’Connor must heal from his alcoholism first, and Kate must find a healthier balance between work and life. There’s a suggestion that they will pursue a relationship in future books.

Kate knows that, if they don’t catch the killer soon, he will strike again. Meanwhile, Clodagh faces her deepest fears in hypnotherapy. She learns that she had a baby sister who died in the same drowning incident as her father, and she must overcome the trauma associated with these realizations. Dominic finally admits that he knew about the baby.

At the end of the book, Kate and O’Connor learn that the murderer is a businessman who once worked alongside Keith and Mr. Hamilton. He wants revenge for the crimes they committed years ago, and he thinks that killing them is the only way to get justice. Kate and O’Connor apprehend the mysterious businessman and no one else dies.