Published by
Thomas & Mercer,
18 April 2023.
ISBN: 978-166250498-3 (PBO)
“You need to let go of Daddy now…”
Hannah has spent years trying to get over an unimaginable childhood trauma. No amount of therapy has been able to release what really happened to her as a youngster and for years she has relied on medication to combat frequent bouts of anxiety. Then she begins to date Sam. Finally, she has something to live for and, more importantly, someone she feels she can trust. The couple marry, and before long daughter Lily is born. Hannah embraces her new life and steps free from the distressing historical event that has, for so long, defined her.
The fairy tale shatters, though, when Hannah discovers that Sam is having an affair with someone he works with. He claims that the liaison meant nothing, but Hannah’s faith in her husband is fractured. She confides in friend, Amy, who advises the still vulnerable wife and mother to kick Sam into touch. Hannah, however, is reluctant to put her child through a messy divorce and agrees to attend a series of counselling sessions. Still smarting from Sam’s betrayal, she agrees to give the marriage a second chance. A family trip to Devon is arranged.
It is May when the trio settle into the idyllic Owl Cottage for a few days away. In the relaxed setting of the rented holiday home, the couple enjoy the simplicity of their surroundings and focus on their young daughter. Hannah sees a glimmer of hope as the man she still loves reminds her why she fell for him in the first place. Then “the first dead owl” is found and things begin to go badly wrong…
Owl Cottage makes a perfect setting for this disturbingly dark mystery. It is just isolated enough to suggest a menace that Hannah initially dismisses, but which quickly increases as the plot unfolds. The story is told mainly through Hannah’s compelling first-person narrative. Against her perspective are woven a series of third person narratives including those of her mother Maud, husband Sam, and friend Amy. These changes of focus wrong-foot the reader and skilfully reflect Hannah’s confusion. Misperceptions are further intensified by frequent time-shifts as the story moves between events from the long past, the recent past and the present day.
Tell Me Lies opens with a family drama that rekindles the disjointed memory of a past tragedy that Hannah cannot let go. It ends with the exposure of an appalling sinister deception.
An intriguing and beguiling mystery - one that I thoroughly
enjoyed and highly recommend.
------
Reviewer: Dot
Marshall-Gent
Teresa Driscoll is a former BBC TV news presenter. Her first psychological thriller I An Watching You sold more than a million copies. For many years Teresa was a journalist covering crime for so long she was moved by the haunting impact on the relatives, the friends and the witnesses and it is those ripples she explores now in her darker fiction. Teresa also writes women’s fiction. She lives in Devon with her family.
Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties. She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues. Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment